The Three-Body Problem
by Azdoine
Summary: "The three-body problem, in astronomy, is the problem of determining the motion of three celestial bodies moving under no influence other than that of their own kinetic energies and mutual gravitation."
1. Chapter 1

_Jupiter - "to rule/to be ruled" (lit., grasp). Inwardly, it's self-control, personal rigor… Outwardly, it's the ability to exercise that control over others; it's that patriarchal charisma that makes people want to be their best self for you._

 _-Postmortem: 100 Days On We Know The Devil, by Aevee Bee_

* * *

The very first night was probably the most amazing thing that Jupiter had _ever_ experienced. (The second-most amazing thing was, of course, the look on the Bonfire Captain's face when she finally took something for _herself_ , and dropped the cabin on top of his stupid fucking guitar.)

The first days were also amazing, in a different kind of way. Every littlest thing once covered under the thinnest veneer of the fear of God, exploding into different bodies, and different languages, and different feelings-

The first days seem far behind them, now. Those were days or weeks ago, and they're a camp of teenagers and young adults, each and every one of them become the Devil; the first days may as well have been _weeks_ or _months_ ago. Distant history!

In that light, it takes far too long for Jupiter to notice that Venus is dimming, and dimming, until she's already dark.

"That's super fucked up," Neptune says, when Jupiter tries to point it out and explain.

"It's fucked up that it took me so long to notice?"

"No? Chill, babe, I'm just saying it's super fucked up that Venus is going dark." Neptune lounges across the lake shore, drying out in the baking sun and imagining dark and brooding things.

Jupiter marshals her thoughts, but Neptune interrupts her before she knows what she's asking.

"On the other hands, maybe we're assuming too much, though," Neptune says. "I mean, it's not like she's running back into the closet, right? She's not turning into a boy again, she's just going darker. So maybe it's just a fashion statement? I don't want to dim-shame her or anything."

"Neptune, I don't think anyone has ever been _dim-shamed_ before in all of human history, what are you on now?"

"First time for everything," Neptune says. "But that's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that I'm not an expert in Devil-ology because _someone_ was a little hazy on the terms and conditions."

"Nobody reads those, Neptune." _Let alone you…_

 _"What I'm saying is_ , I can tell you what a deficit of phlegm and bile means for me. I _can't_ tell you what turning off the light means for Venus. That's not me or my Devil."

"Maybe we should ask Venus," Jupiter suggests, having already given up on getting any conveniently pithy advice from Neptune, at least for now. She's worldly, but she's not a _goddess_ , as much as they can all agree that's an absolute travesty. "Did you ask her about it?"

"Nah, I didn't ask. Mostly because she looked fine when I saw her, actually."

That's how Jupiter decides to go and see Venus herself.

Venus is where she normally is, in the ruins of what was once a secluded shed (before Pluto got a little _too_ drunk, and smeared it across the woods). She's surrounded by the remains of dozens of radios, shattered by eager kids when they realized that they didn't need any _devices_ to transform anymore.

The destruction is a good thing if you only care about the magic and the transformation sequences, but it's a bad thing if you actually care about radios. Venus actually cares about radios; at least when they aren't tuned to evangelical channels, like K-LOVE and METATRON.

"Hey Venus," Jupiter says.

"Oh-" Venus says, blinking dust out of her eyes; she had seen the other girl, but she hadn't _seen_ her. "Hi, Jupiter!"

"LOGARITHMIC IS THE LEPROSY-" her radio crackles. Still looking at Jupiter, she tries to push a crystal into place with her thumb; it fractures, but doesn't break, as it goes.

The crystal finds its place in position between metallic coils, and Venus begins wheeling through the channels without glancing at the dial, too fast for Jupiter to make out much. "-THAUMIEL, THE DIVINE LIGHT IN THE ABSENCE OF-" "-MIXED METAPHORS-" "-LIKE A CONTROLLED USE OF SHARED MEMORY-"

The very sound of it is an eyesore.

The machine (assembled together from six broken radios, the wiring of a phone that Venus had snatched from the Bonfire Captain, and the glue normally prescribed to hold together shattered dreams) finally fades into static. It begins plumbing the depths of frequencies normally blotted out by God's broadcasting, and the results go to tape.

Venus pulls away from the mechanisms, and Jupiter can see that she looks absolutely exhausted.

"What are you working on?" Jupiter asks, already falling into orbit together with the other girl. Her heart falls into her stomach and leaps into her throat, and she's pulled in as if by magnets, the hot iron in her blood.

"This?" Venus smiles, looking embarrassed. She _is_ embarrassed, for her hobby, but also for being caught before her project is done. "It's, well, a surprise. It's not done yet."

"Oh," Jupiter says, trying to imagine what it could be. (If she were able to imagine it, though, she could probably build it herself; and she knows she can't.)

Venus is still smiling and glowing, but as she's been for some time, the glow is entirely metaphorical. The glow isn't _literal_. Her eyes are wide and blue, but the proportions are earthly and human, and the blue doesn't beam. She has no _wings_. Not her old body, but not her new one, either.

Jupiter can't help but worry. And Venus worries, too, because she's alone with Jupiter and she knows that things are… awkward… between them.

"So…" Venus trails off. "How are you?"

"…that was… what I wanted to ask you, actually."

"Um," Venus says. "You're asking me how I am? I'm okay."

Jupiter sits down on an overturned crate, putting her hands on her knees.

"That's good," Jupiter says faintly. "I wanted to spend time with you."

It isn't even a lie. With the magnet dragging her in, she can't help herself. She's being carried along for her own ride.

Tension rolls through Venus' spine, and she turns back to the radio to continue working. She etches an alchemical design into the existing symbology of the circuit board, but her heart isn't in it.

"You're worried about me, aren't you?" Venus asks.

"Yeah," Jupiter admits. "I am."

Venus looks away from the circuit board, down across her body, and she can see that it's plain.

"You looked… really happy when you became the Devil," Jupiter says. "It's-" _Sad? Scary?_ "-worrying to see you, and _not_ see the Devil."

"You never felt worried for me before all of this happened, when I _always_ looked like this," Venus replies. Guilt stabs Jupiter in the gut, but Venus giggles; she isn't _quite_ upset, and she shows it, light rather than heavy. " _I_ never felt worried for me before all of this happened, either. Not for the way I looked. I don't blame you."

Jupiter struggles to meet Venus' eyes. "You didn't look like this before."

Venus seems to dim even further. "I know."

"Neptune isn't worried about you, but I am."

"Neptune doesn't worry because I never worried about her," Venus offers, closing her eyes. She never worries about Neptune, because Neptune doesn't care…

"… _you_ were worried about _me?"_ Jupiter asks, hopelessly confused. Venus chews on her lip for a long time.

"I'm sorry. I know I'm weird," Venus says. "Really weird. And I can tell that Neptune doesn't care, because she thinks that _weird_ is cool. 'Oh, your arm just fell off and you're growing wings, that's so metal, can you talk dirty in Enochian!?'"

It takes a valiant, outright _heroic_ effort for Jupiter not to file Neptune's question under 'blackmail material', before the solemn atmosphere returns.

"Sorry- I- when I think too much, I worry about whether _I'm_ too much- I, I doubt anyone cares if I'm just a girl, or I think I can deal with it if they care?" Venus' voice quavers. "But I look like an angel, and God is exactly who we're trying to get away from." The true shame, the creeping worry that on some level, maybe she's always going to be God's creature…

"And I saw you kept, just… not looking at me. So I thought I was too bright, like the sun," or maybe Jupiter doesn't care as much as Venus hopes she does… "and, and I worry a lot of ways. Sorry. I know that's silly."

Better to be dim, if you think that being bright is an _imposition_. A dark lump rises in Jupiter's throat. "You don't need to apologize."

"So- okay."

She _really_ wants to hug Venus, reassure her. _What do I say, how do I explain myself?_

"Venus… you're…" One of the most normal people here? That's true, especially when you compare her to people like Saturnine and Jack. But that isn't actually what's worrying her. "I wasn't looking away from you because you were too bright… or angelic, or scary."

Venus opens her eyes and meets Jupiter's gaze. "What?"

"I was looking away from you because I felt guilty… and scared of myself."

The crystal in the radio at Venus' side cracks completely, too small for its setting.

"Oh," Venus says dumbly. "Oh. I feel really silly now."

She curls her arms around herself and her ill-fitting shirt.

"You shouldn't," Jupiter says, frustrated or helpless. "It's my fault… for not being able to explain my feelings."

Venus shakes her head. If the way she was acting is a problem — even if she thought she was doing it to help — then she has some of the culpability there, too. "You don't _have_ to explain anything," she says. "I'd like it if you told me how I can help you, but you don't _have_ to tell me that, either?"

"I _should_ explain," Jupiter replies.

"Should, nothing."

Jupiter swallows the lump in her throat. "It's gross... and you would think differently of me."

"I already do think differently of you, Jupiter," Venus replies. Jupiter looks panicked, though, so Venus continues hastily. "You've changed. I've changed, too? People would call me gross, too."

It isn't _untrue_ , either, and both of them know it.

"I want… so many things," Jupiter confesses. "I want things that I probably never would have wanted, before I saw you as the Devil."

Venus blushes deeply, red-hot glass in her cheeks. "It's okay to want… things," she says. She can _almost_ guess what Jupiter wants, which is still so unfamiliar to think about. But she made a choice to believe that _wanting_ was right. "I promise."

Jupiter doesn't feel nearly as bad for wanting Neptune, because on some level she always expected herself to want Neptune. Neptune is and was a self-proclaimed bad girl, and Jupiter thought she knew her type. ( _Why am I so fucked up that I want_ that _, stupid, stupid_ -)

But Venus was always an inoffensive bit character in Jupiter's world, until he became a friend to her, in the narrowing window of time before they met the Devil. And now _she_ isn't a bit character at all, and now… Jupiter wants something from her. A lot of things, maybe _everything_.

She wants Venus so, so, _so_ badly. The same whole-hearted heart-sick way she wants anyone. She wants to hit her, pet her, grab her, hold her, spank her, grope her, choke her-

"I feel like a _predator,"_ Jupiter confesses. "I wanted to look at you, and… and _touch_ _you_ … almost as soon as I realized that you were a pretty girl." As soon as the dust was clear.

And how gross is that? Everything overturned, reduced to the base facts of Venus' flesh. Neptune was uncomfortably right, making stupid jokes about 'dim-shaming', because Jupiter misses Venus' radiance and beauty as the Devil.

Just when she had a grip on things, things changed; and now, maybe she doesn't _really_ care about Venus, maybe she just wants to _screw_ her. Because maybe she didn't _really_ care about Venus until Venus was fuckable-

What is _wrong_ with her?

"I don't think I mind," Venus says, cutting clean through Jupiter's chain of logic.

Jupiter looks at her, really looks. A soft light is creeping into her eyes, happy and sad, and something else.

"I'm _happy_ as the Devil," Venus tries to explain. "I'm not offended or hurt if I can make _you_ happy too, as the Devil. Or if being the Devil gives you the chance to see something in me that you couldn't see before, or if the Devil gives me something that I didn't _have_ before?

"Does that make sense?" _Please understand, Jupiter…_

"...I think so," Jupiter says, but she's torn.

Venus' face wavers with indecision, but she's resolved. And then-

The light she choked down lights up the room, once tucked away and folded in on itself, and Jupiter expects that any minute Venus will rip out of her own fleshy body. Like kicking out of an egg or cocoon, the way she did once before. But instead, her body wavers like a beam of light through mist, and her wings contract into visibility, where they were once outstretched and unseen.

She blocked her light with her wings, and covered her face with her wings, and then she covered her _wings_ with her wings, a traditional demonic exercise in the logically impossible. But covering something up doesn't make it go away; it just makes it harder to see. Venus never went back to any other body, or stopped being the Devil at all.

"Venus… you're…" Now Jupiter has a hard time tearing her eyes away, or even speaking. Venus still half-covers her body in her wings, a nod towards modesty, but she's recognizable as the Devil again.

"You can look," Venus says, vulnerable and yet assured. "It's okay."

"I don't just want to _look,"_ Jupiter says, desperately trying to choose to be okay. Venus' light caresses her skin. Venus is the epicenter.

"I think that's okay, too." Venus takes a deep breath. "I… I really like you, Jupiter. Not because I'm idolizing you, or because I wish I was you. And I want, too, so you shouldn't be ashamed-"

"Stop," Jupiter says, not cruelly. She reaches out, taking one of Venus' many feathers between her many fingers, impossibly warm and soft, not just in the flesh but in everything else. She wants to bury her body there, light all around her, and take the light inside her, and…

Venus watches and waits.

"Would you tell me?" Jupiter asks. "Can you tell me if I do something wrong, or bad, or if I hurt you? I… I worry, too. I worry so much."

"I would tell you," Venus says. "I promise that, too."

If Jupiter is waiting for permission, that's about it.

Perhaps they shouldn't be nervous, not when they've already bared their souls to each other, and helped each other shuck off their old bodies. But this is a different kind of intimacy; not an intimacy of desperate wish and dream, but an intimacy of yearning want and desire.

Venus' body is warm to the touch. Not made of flesh, per se, but pale and tawny starlight. She isn't wearing her shirt, or any clothes at all; the ill-fitting shirt was only a curtain of wings and feathers, and now Jupiter sees all of Venus, the contraction of sweet light.

Jupiter runs a hand along Venus' shoulder. Fuzzy down feathers brush against her palm, fine and inviting all across Venus' body. Venus squirms at the contact; it feels _good_ to be touched _,_ but her body's first reflex is to flinch away anyways.

"Did you really mean what you said?" Venus asks.

"Said what?"

"...did you mean what you said, when you said I was a pretty girl?"

"I did," Jupiter says. The truth is, Venus _is_ pretty, in a way that Jupiter never imagined for herself.

"I don't think anyone's ever called me that before," Venus murmurs, melting against Jupiter's touch; her soul fills with the color of soothing.

"Do you want me to stop?" Jupiter asks.

"No!" Venus blurts out. She claps a hand over her mouth, looking mortified. "No, um… I… kinda liked it…"

Jupiter extends a hand, curling her fingers around Venus' wrist to pull it away from her face; and now Venus doesn't flinch away. "Have you wanted to hear something like that before?" Jupiter asks quietly.

Venus can't answer, but Jupiter understands, at least a little. "That's sweet."

Venus is _glowing_ again, and _smiling_ with her small upturned lips. She can't stop herself from smiling, and Jupiter wants to _touch_ her.

Kissing Venus makes Jupiter as warm on the inside as Venus' skin is on the outside, pressed against her body.

"You _are_ pretty," Jupiter insists, as she pulls away from Venus' lips. "You're beautiful."

"Y-you shouldn't just sit here complimenting me," Venus says, just as sure but even more flustered. "What do you want me to do…? What do you like?"

 _I don't know,_ Jupiter thinks, which is complete nonsense; she only _believes_ that she doesn't know. "Just you," Jupiter says, which is so completely true it hurts a little. "Your wings, can you cover us-?"

"My wings?" Venus asks. Then: "Oh!"

Venus wraps herself around the both of them, cradling them in a hidden place, suspended light and thunder. Jupiter's stomach flutters like Venus' wings, because everywhere she turns she can look directly into the other girl's eyes.

But she's already returning to the kisses, her hands against Venus' chest; moving her lips down across Venus' body. "You're beautiful _here,"_ she says, kissing across Venus' gossamer jaw, "and here," kissing across the curve and hollow of her neck, "and here," kissing down the expanse of her collarbone.

Venus trembles, not from dull panic or fear, but because she's luminous, because she doesn't need to hide from Jupiter after all, because she feels _safe_ , and this feels right.

"H-ah!"

Jupiter's hair falls upon Venus' body, clasping at her exposed torso, before Jupiter brushes it back.

If she keeps going, she isn't sure she'll be able to stop herself.

She keeps going anyways.

The Devil was kind to Venus, if she chose Venus' body for her; maybe Venus was kind to herself, skipping all of the steps and fulfilling every wish of her eyes. She never restrained her wishes, because she never saw her own wishes head-on to notice what God would call excess.

Now you can't _not_ see her wishes, beautifully blinding and blindingly beautiful. Broad hips and plush rear, legs for light-years, a cherubic face glittering with sex and desire and other, simpler things.

The swell of her breasts demands Jupiter's attention, and after weeks of restraint, Jupiter allows herself to do what she wants, and takes them in hands.

Venus gasps out loud, stifling herself again, and the absurd thought comes to Jupiter: _I may be about as new to Venus' body as she is_.

She can't help but want all of it, and she can't help but want to treasure it.

"Your voice is beautiful, too," Jupiter says, her mouth absolutely dry and parched. "You don't need to keep quiet."

A soft sound breaks out of Venus' chest, shining with bliss, as Jupiter continues to test the curves of the her body, heavy with a weight beyond mere starlight. Holding her as if she's never going to let go.

It makes Venus feel appreciated, rather than just self-conscious. Her own errant fingers clumsily begin to peel Jupiter's jacket away, and Jupiter's hands act unbidden to help her from there, unbuttoning the flannel underneath.

Jupiter's breasts are much smaller than Venus'; becoming the Devil didn't change her body much, because she was (and is) a creature of _doing_ and _feeling_ rather than _being_. Her body is rough and hewn from hours of rough-and-tumble, and her raw skin has healed raw red, blush-stained the color of blood all across her smaller and slender body.

There's a small note of disappointment, the sinking sensation of coming short at the last second, compared to the beauty in her arms. But Venus sees Jupiter's body, and although she doesn't understand why Jupiter's body is the way it is, her heart still pounds harder and harder in her chest, and she wets her lips without thinking about it. She takes in the sight of Jupiter's body, and her gaze is still _entranced_ , and she reaches out to touch Jupiter's chest-

Somehow, Jupiter forgets that she's supposed to be worried.

Jupiter's own arms move in absolute defiance of geometry, as the Devil always can; she branches every which way and then some, in order to explore Venus' body further. She runs languid fingers through the vanes of Venus' feathers, and Venus gasps.

"I-it hurts to pull on those," she whispers, and Jupiter pulls her hands away from Venus, whose face falls. "I'm not telling you to stop, I'm just, um, asking you to be careful?"

"The same way I'm careful with these?" Jupiter ask, breathless. Hands slip around Venus from behind her, and Jupiter tweaks the other girl's nipples, before shifting to cup and tease her tits again. "Don't worry, I don't want to hurt you." _Not like that_.

Jupiter returns to carefully combing through Venus' feathers, working out every kink. But Jupiter's hands on Venus' breasts are like nothing Venus had ever felt before. Dizzy fire blooms in her chest from one moment to the next, rising to her skin until every delicate touch and tender squeeze sends wafts of hazy pleasure through her.

One of Venus' wings twitches, extending to its full length and knocking over a pile of radio wreckage. She doesn't care or even register it, too wrapped up in the feelings that Jupiter is giving her.

Jupiter takes her time in attending to Venus, and savors every moment as if it will last forever or end in seconds. She gives Venus' nipples gentle pinches and runs her calloused thumbs around her areolas, as her hands continue to descend. Beneath and below six wings, she grabs the small of Venus' back to pull her in until their hips are touching, and Venus moans into her.

Venus is so _pliant_ under Jupiter's hands. Hers to touch and to hold. She wants to pin the luminous girl down against the earth and fuck her until she's screaming her name. She wants to prop Venus up against the empty vault of the sky and fuck her until all of the pleasure is wrung out of her.

Jupiter's hands continue to fold and breathe against Venus' body, meeting the hollow glass bones and joints of her wings to stroke them, back and forth. Caressing the supple, hollow crook of her wings. Venus shifts and squirms almost cutely, rubbing her thighs together, arresting Jupiter by the closeness of their bodies.

"Jupiter, I-" Venus whimpers, and chokes, not because she doesn't want to speak, but because words have failed her. Her cerulean pupils yearn open, wider than the sky, and slick arousal drips down her legs.

"Yeah?" Jupiter asks. (In fairness to Venus, Jupiter isn't doing much better.)

Venus doesn't want this to be _weird_. She wants it to be the most normal, natural thing in the world. "Please… I want you to keep going."

"Keep going?" Jupiter asks. It wasn't what she _wanted_ to ask, she wanted to go to hell with questions. But somehow, she _can't_ do this if she thinks she could misunderstand, she _needs_ to make sure, she's scared of herself. "You need to tell me what you want, Venus."

"I-" Venus takes in a gasping lungful of air. Even self-knowledge can't stop Venus from being stricken bashful again (so turned on she could just _die,_ so _needy_ for Jupiter's fingers between her legs). "-I-I want you to touch- I want you to put your-" _Say it,_ "-I want you to fuck me!"

Her skin turns terribly wan, and Jupiter smiles a crooked smile. "I think that's maybe the second or third time I've heard you curse, ever."

"Sorry- I mean, uh!"

"You don't have to be sorry," Jupiter says, and now her voice is actually admonishing. "It's… actually hot, to know you can let go like that." Venus' embarrassment itself is cute, but a hand reaches inside Jupiter and _thumps_ at the thought that she can so overwhelm the other girl's mouth. _How many more times can you make her curse?_

At the words 'let go', Venus finds herself faint. She's even _fainter_ when Jupiter's hands trace up her inner thighs.

"Thanks," Jupiter whispers. "For telling me. Reminding me more like, haha." She's being silly — _do it, just do it_.

It's such a _little_ thing, thanking her, but Venus begins to shine even brighter, and her wings flutter as if they're preening. The idea strikes through Jupiter like a lightning bolt, voiced simply: "Good girl."

And Venus just goes _slack_ , her breath coming in glorious tatters.

It's so, so, so easy to just _forget_ why she ever hid anything, even hid from herself. Easy to just take this as it comes without having to _choose_ it; easy to accept that she's happy, and she feels good, and this makes her happy, and it feels good.

And it's sinking past Jupiter's skin and into her bones that this is real, that she can touch, and it's okay, and even wanted. There's a feeling of power: not power over Venus, but power _with_ Venus.

Jupiter's hands hook around Venus' legs (she's weak in the knees, in every limb) and spread them open, exposing her completely. Jupiter's fingers drum against Venus' inner thighs (she's so _sensitive_ ) and grip Venus' ass (so _soft_ ).

"Good," Jupiter says, reassuring herself as much as reassuring Venus. "Stay open for me."

Venus whines, plaintive, and Jupiter circles her fingertips around and on Venus' clit, getting her hands wet with Venus' need. "Oh," Venus exhales, and her hips jerk sharply against Jupiter, even as hands and arms hold her in place. _Jupiter, please, more..._

Jupiter holds Venus close and facing her. Like a lover, skin-to-skin. Feeling Venus shake and quiver. She pushes a finger further down, then further in; and Venus yields, her breath hitching while her body comes apart around Jupiter's touch.

"Are you okay?" Jupiter asks. Venus' breath is coming in gasps.

"Y-yeah, I-" Venus strains to take a deep breath. "More intense than I expected," she chokes out, her eyes blown over like morning fog. "Not bad." Exactly the opposite, in fact. The exquisite promise of more.

Jupiter moves in Venus, and Venus is closer to Jupiter than she thinks she's ever been with anyone before. Her legs wrap around Jupiter, and she involuntarily _clenches_ around Jupiter, as Jupiter inserts another finger.

Venus already feels impossibly full, filling to bursting with Jupiter's body, scintillating with her own radiance; Venus is impossibly hot and tight and wet around Jupiter's fingers, like she's reaching inside of a star. That's its own reward, and it's worth it, to leave Venus like this.

"You're doing good," Jupiter whispers, her own voice drawing out into a ragged live wire. Her fingers move _just so_ inside of Venus while she thumbs her clit, and Venus cries out, tender, stricken wordless.

"Th-there! Harder!" she croaks, and Jupiter kisses her on the jaw, beneath her ear.

"Good girl," Jupiter murmurs. Venus' vision blurs as Jupiter continues her assault. Any coherency Venus might have mustered leaves her, now, weeping from her eyes or leaking from her pussy. There's nothing inside of her but Jupiter; Jupiter, the name falling out of her mouth between her gasps and moans; Jupiter, looming large enough to engulf her until she loses herself.

She already has.

Jupiter hits something deep inside of Venus, and Venus breaks open, warm and spilling. Coming around Jupiter's hand, burying her face in Jupiter's neck and babbling, crying out. _Jupiter, don't stop, Jupiter, please, don't stop, don't stop don't stop you're so so good I love you so much I can't don't stop-_

Every inch of her body is glowing, and her heart is throbbing, her heart might as well be pouring out of her. She didn't realize that she was crying; she didn't even realize that she was speaking, let alone that she was screaming, but now her lungs are hoarse, and her breath is shaking harder than she is, and her cheeks are wet (although her legs are wetter).

For every kind of touch Jupiter has, it's the hands stroking through Venus' long, long hair that ground her against Jupiter's body. Bringing Venus back to the two of them, their bodies twining together into the tangle of limbs that cradles them both. Jupiter's palms trace circles across Venus' pounding chest.

Venus lies there, her body in absolute surrender. Not just surrender to Jupiter, but also to herself. Her body aches in her sensitivity; her limbs tremble, weak and quivering Doppler shifts.

A hand rises up to brush away Venus' tears, punctuated by the look of concern on Jupiter's face, and Venus nuzzles her cheek into Jupiter's fingers. Jupiter relaxes, and strokes her knuckles across Venus' face.

Jupiter looks like a mess, too, with wind-blown hair and skin sticky with sweat. She fights to catch her breath, and her jeans are uncomfortably rough and damp on both of their skin, now that they're clear to think of it-

"You're still wearing pants," Venus says faintly, some faint accusatory note completely lost in the afterglow.

"Ah," Jupiter says. She frowns, and looks away. Her skin is still raw, but it's only sunburned rather than bloody. "I think I had more important things to worry about. You, I mean."

Even manifesting a thousand and one hands, she wouldn't have felt like she had enough. Every hand she wasted on herself was a hand that she couldn't have touched Venus with.

Now, her blood is cooler; merely warm, instead of boiling to a storm. But she's spent, at least for now.

"Are you disappointed?"

"Maybe a little bit," Venus says. Her cheeks burn, and she buries herself in Jupiter's chest almost as soon as she says it. Jupiter returns to stroking Venus' hair.

So, Venus is actually still… well, Neptune might call Venus a super-dork. Thoughtless, maybe.

That isn't a surprise to Jupiter, it's screamingly obvious. But it still means that she has to confront an awful truth: _anything_ can be cute and attractive, in a girl that she already found a way to crush on.

 _Why am I such a dyke?_

And Venus was incoherent towards the end, but she was still so fucking beautiful that Jupiter had to hold her. And even if Venus was just drunk on sex, right now Jupiter understands exactly why you might love someone — and tell them as much — in the heat of the moment.

The look on Venus' face and the feeling of her shaking body when she came in Jupiter's arms is easy to fall in love with. The way she lit up with every last sweet nothing, warm against Jupiter's skin. Jupiter thinks maybe she already _has_ fallen in love.

 _Why am I_ such _a_ dyke?

But… the sky isn't actually falling on them. If this feels hollow in her chest, it's only because she expects it to feel hollow, and she doesn't have to feel that way.

Instead, this is… it feels… nice. Jupiter takes Venus' hand in her own, and feels that Venus is still splayed and weak.

"We can take off my pants later," Jupiter says, and to absolutely no-one's surprise, she means it.

A heartbeat.

"Thanks," Venus says. "I mean, uh, not for taking-off-your-pants. That too, but thanks for all of that. That was… really good."

"It wasn't something you asked me to do," Jupiter replies. If Venus _did_ ask Jupiter, it was only because Jupiter asked her to ask… right?

 _Why does this have to be complicated?_

"Still," Venus says. "Thank you."

 _Maybe it isn't complicated at all._

"It was my pleasure," Jupiter says, and she finds herself smiling widely, as if the very corners of her mouth and the muscles in her cheeks are being taken and lifted by unseen hands. Then she remembers this is what smiling _really feels like_.

They hang in the ruins of the shack in the woods, weightless, and the only thing that matters to Jupiter in this one moment is the feeling of Venus' breath on her chest, the feeling of Venus' hand in her hand. The only thing that matters to Venus in this moment is wrapping herself in that eye of the storm, for just a little while.

Venus is smiling, too.

"Hey — Venus?" Jupiter cranes her head very slightly. "Do you see where I dropped my jacket?"

"Oh," Venus says, and furrows her brows. "I think Neptune came by and took it while we were busy?"

"Neptune was _here!?_ Why didn't you say something!?"

"What-? I thought you noticed her!?"


	2. Chapter 2

_"Jupiter I promise on a stack of bibles it's not your fault and I will slap your face if you say it was. I will punch you in the face for every word you say. I am so for real."_

 _-We Know The Devil_

* * *

The first girl Neptune ever kissed was a beautiful liar.

The two of them met, and each of them thought the other one was super hot. They didn't fall in love, because Neptune couldn't say the word 'love' if it killed her, and the other girl didn't want to be too forward. They didn't go on dates because they would be flayed alive for it by their parents, possibly literally. So mostly they just kissed each other in broom closets, until the janitor walked in on them as they were hitting second base, and it was all fucking over.

"Neptune made me do it!" the other girl said as they were dragged out for the crowd, sobbing and lying through her teeth. (Neptune couldn't blame her, but she totally _begrudged_ her, anyways.) And that was how Neptune came to be known as an evil seductive temptress, and it was how she got sent to conversion therapy, aka the Summer Scouts, for the first time.

Well, she was hardly opposed to the idea of being a temptress. It seemed fun! There was no reason not to play into a role like that, if you could enjoy it, if you were _already_ a bad kid. She was going to seduce good women, to make them love-slaves before her feet, to hear the lamentations of their men!

She was gonna be God-damn Lilith in the Garden of Eden, and she was gonna be like: "Hey Adam, can I be on top this time?" And Adam would be like "Fuck no, bitch, I'm the dominant one here," and she'd be like "Fuck you Adam, I said I wanted to ride you cowgirl, not that I wanted to be the domme, you hypersensitive control freak, I'm getting a divorce."

And then God would make Eve as a replacement wife for Adam, and Neptune would be like: "Hey Eve, what was the last time Adam helped you get off?" and she'd demonstrate her _technique_ on Eve, and Eve would be like "Oh, Mistress, sit on my face!" and they'd leave Adam all alone in the Garden, that absolute fuckboy. Hell yeah.

So Neptune spent a lot of time thinking about biblical lesbian sex. Yeah, she'd admit it. It wasn't like she had much else to do, getting lore drilled into her skull.

On the night they met the Devil, Neptune played the role of the seducer, and Jupiter the part of the seduced. But really, what little thing did it take Neptune to persuade Jupiter, the two of them sitting together and alone in a closet? What erotic intrigue did she have to play out?

Neptune said a lot of things, but really she was only saying _one_ thing, in six different ways: "No one is going to know what we do in here." And then Jupiter scraped her tongue along Neptune's teeth, and grabbed her waist with fingers like iron, and then there was no pretending that anyone was _making_ Jupiter do anything.

* * *

When they first heard the Devil's voice, she said the bodies she could give were weak, and her stories were impossible... but she was probably lying.

Now, beginning to grow into the fullness of themselves, they _are_ strong; because if they can't or won't be strong, they have each other to lean on. The Devil's stories surely aren't impossible, because they're all _living_ the stories.

As far as Neptune is concerned, the Devil's obfuscation probably came to her the same way it came to all grown-ups, all flowery and esoteric. Maybe the Devil was talking herself down as some kind of secret demonic test of character. Because… the Devil really isn't a total bitch. She's actually pretty awesome, all things considered. But she's still the Devil; she's about as transparent as God on a good day.

Jupiter… well, she doesn't give any mind to the Devil being a liar. She doesn't even give (much) mind to the heresy and sin they've remade themselves in. But she's still _s_ _crupulous_.

"Being the Devil is totally unfair," Jupiter says, one day, while she and Neptune are curled up underneath Venus, like a blanket. Venus is already asleep, and her breath pushes and pulls at her hair as she snores.

"It's totally unfair in our favor, though," Neptune quietly drawls. "So we're not supposed to complain about it. Don't bite the hand that feeds you, and all."

"I can't not think about it," Jupiter confesses. "It's too weird. Forget everything else for a second. Isn't your first time supposed to hurt? Did we get to skip all of that because we turned into the Devil? Some messed-up demonic thing? Are we, I don't know. Cheating?"

Oh, well, of _course_ they're 'cheating'. Who exactly decided how their old bodies would be able to have sex? _God_ , that fucker. Even if the Devil is just a metaphor for yourself, there's no way she would let that slide.

That's not what Neptune says, though, because even if she knows this, she doesn't know that she knows it, and she doesn't know how to say it.

"You're going to make me cry, Jupiter, that is the lamest thing to ever feel guilty about missing out on and I fully encourage you to cheat when it comes to — how did my youth pastor put it? — the pleasures of the flesh.

"But secondly, how can you tell that the Devil changed our bodies like _that?_ Isn't it just as likely that our laughable excuses for 'sex education' just totally lied to us?"

"Um." _What_.

"I mean, come _on,_ Jupiter." Neptune's voice takes on a nasally tone. "'Oh yeah, the first time you have sex it's going to hurt like Hell and you're definitely going to hate it. But only if you're a girl.' Doesn't that just sound like the _perfect_ story for fun-hating grown-ups to use to scare girls into staying virgins?"

Jupiter frowns. "I-" Venus exhales deeply, still unconscious, blowing a lock of hair across Jupiter's eyes. "-can't actually argue with you. That's suspiciously convenient, on your part, I mean."

"I'm the Devil, sweetie. Suspiciously convenient rationalizations for the pleasures of the flesh are my job."

"Hahaha," Jupiter giggles a little. "I'm sure there's an answer to this. _Someone_ has to know. Maybe we have to get an opinion from someone who's not a creepy abstinence-only preacher."

"Mmm," Neptune murmurs. "Shall we go seduce some young virgin women, then, and find out?"

Jupiter stares at Neptune, and her stomach does a queer sort of flip. _Are you serious?_

She's in a relationship with Neptune and Venus both, she likes them both, but it never occurred to her that they could go even further in that regard. She doesn't think she _wants_ to go further. She doesn't want to go off 'seducing virgins' because — for once — she's happy with what she has right now, and not because she's crippled by her fear of being _bad_.

"Just kidding," Neptune says, and she winks at Jupiter. "You know I'd never go off seducing virgins without the whole crew. We'd need to wake Venus up first, and I just can't bear to disturb sleeping beauty."

 _"Neptune!"_ Jupiter huffs.

"What? I literally just said I was kidding," Neptune says, and Jupiter gives it up as a bad joke. She wraps an arm around Neptune, and the other girl squeezes it.

On some level, there's a sort of vertigo. She and everyone else believes that this is okay — they know it's sin, but they believe it isn't 'bad'. But what if she and everyone else is _wrong?_ The wild excuses are peeled away, exposing a deeper anxiety, _is this life too good to be true?_

"You look like you're about to cry," Neptune says.

"Ugh," Jupiter replies. "You think Venus would take it the wrong way if I used her wings as tissues?"

"Nice distraction, Jupiter."

Jupiter shrugs a little, and Neptune scowls.

"I can totally tell you're being mean to yourself, so fucking stop it. The only one allowed to be mean to you is me."

Jupiter rolls her eyes, but the vertigo is thoroughly broken. "Thanks, I love you too, Neptune."

"GOD, you bitch, you figured me out. You figured out that I love you, and I was trying so hard to hide it, too."

An idle hand tumbles across Neptune's face, like, _I can't be bothered not to fall on top of you_. Neptune pushes it away, but doesn't complain; the two of them lie in a comfortable silence until they begin to fall asleep.

 _The only one allowed to be mean to you is me_.

It's a bad joke, a ridiculous joke. Cruel things and dark things spilling from Neptune's lips, instead of welling up from the scars of old habits. It _should_ be an absolutely terrible idea. It _should_ hurt so much more for Neptune to be cruel to Jupiter than for Jupiter to be cruel to herself.

She thinks of Neptune's voice, dripping with disgust and sadism, and it should mean _you're loathsome and I want you to suffer_. But instead it means anything else. Something unutterably private, unforgivingly affectionate, as Neptune always is.

It is an absolutely terrible idea. But she thinks about it anyways, until she closes her eyes; and when Neptune wakes her up in the morning for pancakes, she feels as if she left her skin behind in her dreams.

* * *

It's surprisingly easy to get internet in camp. You can get radio in camp — you can get radio _anywhere_ — and if you can squeeze the word of God himself through the radio waves, you can fit _anything_ in there.

What you _can't_ get in camp is… just about anything else. You want chocolate? Good luck torrenting _that_. They can't get it delivered directly to them in the mail, either, because what the hell address would they mark down? They're kind of totally in a cold war with the church and they're only _metaphorically_ living on the campgrounds because they're really living inside of the metaphor itself; the practicalities give Mars headaches and the metaphysics give _everyone_ headaches.

This is why Jupiter and Neptune are driving down a road in the ass-end of nowhere, in the truck they stole from the Bonfire Captain. Because Jupiter wanted _chocolate_. And no-one ever leaves camp without someone else to lean on, no matter how short the errand might be; but they also can't bring three people out at once, because there are only two seats in the pickup.

Now, Jupiter is sitting in the passenger's seat. Instead of thinking about defying geometry and retrofitting the car, she's thinking about the mistakes she made in the convenience store, and stress-eating some of the candy that was meant to last for weeks; an arm hangs out of the open window, and she cuts the wind between her fingers.

"You know you're not the only one to fuck up, right?" Neptune asks rhetorically. "Once I was out at a library with Apollo and checking out some gay porn — I mean, 'romance' — when I thought of you. I got so wet the librarians thought I pissed myself."

"Jesus, Neptune." Jupiter screws up her face, but her cheeks turn tender and red.

"Yeah, I bet Jesus would be mad…" Neptune crushes a can of something disgusting-tasting in her hand and throws it into the back-seat. "...if there was anyone alive who could actually channel him properly!"

 _"Not the point,"_ Jupiter grumbles.

"It's totally the fucking point, nobody's actually perfect, so stop beating yourself up. If you're bad then everyone is bad."

That would be reassuring, if 'everyone is bad' wasn't a self-consistent moral position held by about half the population of their shitty country. _Total depravity._ Jupiter can hear her mother's voice running down the back of her neck, hot words and cold breath and hot breath and cold words.

"I could have gotten us in really serious trouble," Jupiter says. If she had just kept her hands to herself, if she had managed to pass as a human for more than thirty seconds… She was so, so bad at pretending, when it was most important.

Where her hair tie used to be, her wrist feels vaguely open and exposed. She wishes Neptune could hold her hand.

"No-one actually noticed you, Jupes," Neptune replies. (The cashier was too busy looking at her legs to see Jupiter's arms.) "Besides, this is liminal middle America, do you have any idea many monsters they probably get out here? I think the chick behind us was a vampire. If they called the church for everyone who didn't look human they'd need six and a half hotlines."

"That's suspiciously convenient," Jupiter says.

"Yeah, well, sometimes _life_ is suspiciously convenient."

Jupiter closes her eyes against the wind that buffets her face. Neptune floors it down the long, languid stretch of the highway, and jerks the wheel to the side, sending them up and around a local complex of allegories.

"What do you think of me, Neptune?"

"Wow, is that a loaded question or what?"

Jupiter shifts in her seat. "I know I'm messed up, right? I know I'm good. I know that sometimes I'm dumb enough to believe that I'm bad. Would you rather I tried to accept that I'm already good? Would you rather I tried to become bad?"

"I think both of those would be pretty good looks on you, honestly."

"Haha!" Jupiter laughs, and forgets for a moment.

Neptune doesn't say anything else, watching Jupiter out of the corner of her eye.

"It's hard to do both at once," Jupiter says, clutching her knees. Neptune shakes her head.

"I care about you," Neptune says. "I wish you cared about you, too."

"I _do_ care about myself," Jupiter replies. "But…"

"But?"

Jupiter is scarred and raw, physically and mentally, but that doesn't mean she hasn't healed at all. The problem isn't that she's worried about being bad, the problem is that she wants to be _better_.

How can she say that she has any self-esteem at all, if she sometimes wants Neptune to treat her terribly? She doesn't want to abuse herself, she doesn't want anyone to abuse her; but somehow, if it's _Neptune_...

"Nevermind," Jupiter says.

And Neptune _looks_ at her. Her pupils have swallowed the colors and whites that should surround them, leaving gaping black pools in place of her eyes, deep enough to drown in and live forever.

"Let's just go home," Jupiter says.

* * *

The first girl Jupiter ever kissed was an ugly liar; she was beautiful, but her lies were ugly and her truths could be uglier.

The first girl Jupiter ever kissed was Neptune. Jupiter wasn't sent to the Summer Scouts because she was caught out as a lesbian, but just because she fucked up and messed up on missionary work.

...at least, that's what it said on the paperwork.

Jupiter's mother knew that there was something wrong with her, deeper than _making_ a mistake. She always knew, like God, looking down from above and seeing souls laid out in tracery. She knew that Jupiter _was_ a mistake, even before Jupiter had the chance to do what she wanted to do.

Jupiter has nightmares, sometimes, of what Hell might be like. She has always dreamed of Hell, bodies and hearts blooming into perfect suffering under the hands of perfect punishment. Hell may be a metaphor, but that doesn't mean that it isn't real enough to trap you inside and make you hurt. _Rip, tear, crush, burn, cut, spindle-_

She has always dreamed of the Devil, but now she dreams of the Devil as Neptune, holding her in loose limbs that won't let go, and it's not quite a nightmare. _I'm going to hurt you, and the only 'trap' is that you're going to want it; maybe because you know you deserve it, or maybe just because the pain feels good._ And none of that is quite true, even in Jupiter's dreams, because it's just some intimate cipher. Or it is true, but it doesn't hurt, because it's built on something else-

One part is certainly true: she _does_ want it.

* * *

"You've been very bad, Jupiter, haven't you?"

It's a parody. It's a perversion, sexual debauchery and sin; it's a perversion, an old thought bent into a new shape. It feels exactly like Jupiter expected it would. It feels completely different.

Neptune is standing in front of the edge of the bed; Jupiter is on her knees in front of _her_. The other girl's hands gently press down on her shoulders until she's sitting on her heels.

"Yes," Jupiter admits, in the same tone of voice she always uses. _Father, forgive me, for I have sinned…_

"I _thought_ so," Neptune says. Her voice drips with disappointment, coiling heavy around Jupiter's body. "I also thought you were better than this, Jupiter."

Jupiter's face burns. "I'm sorry."

"Sorry?" Neptune drawls. Absolutely disbelieving. "That's an awful lot right there, all in one little word. What are you sorry for?"

She's naked on the ground, and Neptune isn't…

"…I want to look up your skirt right now," Jupiter admits. It comes out of her mouth just like the way she wants to peel Neptune's skirt away from her legs, and Neptune's lips curve into a triumphant smile.

"Oh, _Jupiter_. What are we going to do with you?" Neptune leans back and sits down against the bed. "Come here."

The carpet scrapes painfully against Jupiter's legs as she moves closer; they replaced the old hardwood floor in here ages ago, a quiet way to make something new out of things, _this is our room now._ But the floor isn't any more comfortable than before.

Neptune takes Jupiter's chin in one hand, with slow and deliberate movements. Up close and down against the floor, Jupiter can see up Neptune's skirt after all; the other girl isn't wearing any panties, leaving her cunt exposed, wet and overflowing.

Neptune grins smugly at the look on Jupiter's face, dredging her mind into a tizzy of filth. "Th-that's not all I've done," Jupiter stammers.

"So tell me about it," Neptune replies. Her words are yet another kind of touch; they trace the pulse on the inside of Jupiter's neck, and hold against her breath. "On my lap, now."

It's not just about getting off, or giving in, but it's about… acceptance, maybe. If you can do something for real, in some small measure, and it doesn't destroy you, then maybe it doesn't have to haunt you in any measure at all.

(But, yeah, it's _also_ about getting off.)

Jupiter pushes herself off of the floor; or she lets herself go, to float back upwards, lighter-than-air. After lowering herself for Neptune, all down against the earth and twitching with careless anticipation, her knees are red and sore like crushed pomegranates.

She moves to sit in Neptune's lap-

"Not like _that,_ " Neptune murmurs, throaty by Jupiter's ear, and she reaches out to grope Jupiter's ass.

They've talked for hours; they each managed to say what they wanted to do, what they wouldn't do, but Jupiter left a lot to Neptune. Somehow, even having said she wanted this, this feels like a surprise.

Neptune barely needed Jupiter to _tell_ her anything, which was either sexy or terrifying. Possibly both. But Jupiter trusted Neptune.

Jupiter _trusts_ Neptune. She steps back and angles herself around Neptune's body, until she's bent over Neptune's knees. Neptune is still wearing her clothes, dressed up like a proper Christian girl, and Jupiter is still naked. Exposed and open.

Her mother used to spank her with her hands, until — she moved onto using her belt? Corporal punishment is nothing unusual, which only makes it harder to confront how terrible it was. Her mother eventually moved onto less direct ways to punish her, but she can't remember _why_. She supposes that might be a good thing.

But Neptune isn't using a belt, she doesn't even _have_ a belt, she's Neptune, she doesn't own a single pair of pants because _fuck you, if wearing pants 'gives boys the wrong message', I'll wear a dress and say the message to their faces, anyways._

"You were saying something?" Neptune croons, bringing Jupiter back to the here and now. Her fingers run down the length of Jupiter's spine, down to her tailbone; the flat of her palm moves across Jupiter's bottom.

"I'm bad," Jupiter says, and it's thrilling because it feels like a lie. A game.

"Oh, we established that already, Jupiter. Do go on."

Jupiter takes a deep breath. "I have sex with girls."

Neptune's hand raises and then falls again, hammering against Jupiter's ass with a thundering _crack._ Her expectations are torn apart, obliterated straight through in a thin split-second of pain; her mouth parts with a gasp.

Jupiter's body is so tense (so _other_ ) that Neptune might as well be trying to beat through iron. Her arm ripples as the blow lands.

"And you want to lay with me, too, don't you?" Neptune asks. They both know the answer, but dragging the wickedness out into the air makes it delicious. "I can see the way you look at me."

"I do," Jupiter says. Her voice is weak.

 _Crack_.

Neptune's hand descends again and again, finding new patches of untouched skin to break upon. "Is that all, Jupiter?"

"No," Jupiter gasps. She's absolutely aware that Neptune can see all of her. Her reactions are obvious enough to lay her feelings bare. "I have two girlfriends at once," she says, spitting further in the face of who she's expected to be. "Last night, I fucked them with my hands while I made them eat me out."

 _Crack_. Jupiter rocks forward from the force of the blow; Neptune's rough skirt scrapes against her stomach like it's going to carve something out. "Th-then, I helped one of them fuck the other with a-"

 _Crack!_ Jupiter forgets what she's trying to say. Neptune continues spanking her, over and over. Each hit is sharp enough that she curls her fingers into fists, and she _twists_ in Neptune's lap like she's simultaneously trying to pull away and get closer. She feels woozy down to her toes.

(Even with Jupiter slowly relaxing into the 'punishment', Neptune's hand is stinging harder than Jupiter's ass. But she's far from complaining; it's better than hand cramps, and every sharp noise spilling from Jupiter's throat more than makes it worth it.)

"You're laying it on thick," Neptune says with a chuckle, when she finally stops. "Are you so eager to repent?"

"No," Jupiter pants. "I'm enjoying this. I want you to keep spanking me-"

 _Crack!_ The blow is enough to leave her seeing stars.

"Unbelievable," Neptune says, her voice low and mocking. "You _are_ enjoying this."

(How _can_ she enjoy this?)

Neptune palms Jupiter's ass, and her fingers slide between Jupiter's thighs. Jupiter makes a _sound_ , diminished and crushed.

(This isn't the first time or the first way Jupiter has found love and pain so entangled. Her mother loved her _because_ she could hurt her. Her father hurt her because he didn't know any other way to show his love.)

"You're making such a _mess,"_ Neptune says, and she's perfectly sincere. Her hand comes away dripping with a sheen of wetness, and not all of it is Jupiter's. Sweat runs down her skin, salt-water and brack and oil slick. "You're making _me_ make a mess. You're making me just as dirty and filthy as you are."

(Neptune is hurting Jupiter because she loves her, because she asked. They could show their love any other way, if they wanted; there is only one way to be good, and a thousand and one ways to be evil.)

Jupiter tries so hard not to reciprocate, not to touch. She's restrained by _herself_ , rather than obligation. But a hand slips free from her shoulder, hiking up Neptune's skirt as it moves to touch her ribs, and-

 _Crack!_

Jupiter whimpers at the sudden return to form, and the entire lower half of her body vibrates from the force of the spanking. Forgotten pain and pleasure mix together with the dull static that gushes through her head.

"What do you think you're doing, Jupiter?" Neptune asks rhetorically. Her lashes drop and ripple down her eyes.

"You said I made a mess, right?" Jupiter says, blushing heavily. It takes a moment for her to pull herself together, and she rolls herself about in Neptune's lap to face her more directly. "I should clean it up..."

"Oh, really?" Neptune smirks, but she's breathing harder now. "You would enjoy _that_ , too, wouldn't you?"

She extends her hand, covered in Jupiter's own arousal, and Jupiter parts her lips without thinking about it, leaning in to suckle on Neptune's fingers.

The two of them together taste like petrichor.

"You're absolutely beyond salvation," Neptune says, fucking Jupiter's mouth with her hand. Jupiter mewls piteously, muffled by wickedness on her tongue. "You don't want to take responsibility for your sins, or make up for them. You just want to keep sinning."

Jupiter can hardly say no. (A hand holds the back of Neptune's neck, telling her anything she might want to hear.)

Neptune pulls her hand from Jupiter's mouth with a _pop_. Her mouth hangs open in an 'o' for a moment, before Neptune drops her other hand to grope the soreness still clinging to Jupiter's ass.

Jupiter can't resist groping back again, reaching up Neptune's shirt and filling the gap between their bodies. She isn't wearing a bra, either.

 _Crack!_ Neptune's hand slams into the back of Jupiter's thigh, and Jupiter audibly moans.

"You're such a _whore,"_ Neptune says, her words sounding blacker and blacker even while they run clear. "A stupid dyke. A slut for punishment."

(The words are the same words that people have always used to hurt them, but Neptune says them the same way she would say "I love you".)

(Neptune has always been too forceful and cruel with other people. _I'll force yourself down your own throat even if you don't want to be yourself, because I can't stand your suffering_. It's a strange relief to "force" this upon Jupiter, and see her willingly swallow.)

"I am," Jupiter stammers.

Neptune grips Jupiter tighter in her own arms (less numerous, but not weaker) and throws her around onto the bedsheets. She hits the mattress, and Neptune practically crawls over her, pinning her against the bed with unyielding force.

Neptune grabs Jupiter's hair, and Jupiter dimly realizes through the rush of static that her own hands have torn Neptune's skirt away.

"You deserve this," Neptune says, grabbing one of Jupiter's breasts and squeezing hard enough to make her yelp. "Do I even need to fuck you to make you cum? Or should I just keep punishing you?"

Jupiter keens, high in her throat. Neptune already betrays her arousal, grinding against Jupiter's body. _Jupiter, more willing than she is needy, and needier than she is willing._ It's one of the hottest things Neptune has ever seen.

"Please," Jupiter rasps. "More."

"More?" Neptune puts on a sneer. "You're so desperately gay, Jupiter. I could fucking _crucify_ you and you would beg for more, just because it was a girl doing it to you, wouldn't you?"

"Yes!" Jupiter squeals. She spasms underneath Neptune, who continues to buck her hips against her. Neptune's fingers slip between Jupiter's legs and pinch at sensitive skin.

Jupiter's hands extend in earnest lust and need, pulling Neptune closer. Their bodies seem to unfold, unspool, entwine; Jupiter's arms, already everywhere and nowhere, give Neptune something to grind upon, and Neptune pushes Jupiter's head into the pillows until she's all but gagged. "Raise your hips, Jupiter."

The spankings that Jupiter are expecting don't come. Neptune just massages the blotches of deeper red skin across her rear and legs, the beginnings of welts yet to come. Attending oh-so-lovingly to ravage and ruin. (And somehow, that's even more intense than the pain.)

Neptune is already coming, after winding herself up so much; her pussy throbs, hot around nothing but her own relief and her thoughts for Jupiter. Ichor and brine have stained the blankets.

She's still incredibly horny. But even even that won't stop her from wrapping Jupiter around her little finger; she exhales deeply. "I will, _nnh_ , make you orgasm so hard it _hurts_."

Jupiter moans into the pillows, Neptune bearing down on her pussy and pushing against her hips until she wonders if her body is going to splinter. This sort of cruelty is awful, agonizing, terrible on multiple levels, every level, but by some alchemy it has been transformed.

She can't think about how cruelty should make her feel, or how cruelty has made her feel before, she can only think about how good it feels, and how she wants to keep going forever.

Neptune rubs her thumb, slippery with arousal and wickedness, against Jupiter's asshole, and Jupiter whimpers. Shame twists and jags with static and pleasure, _this is gross but I don't want you to stop_ -

She's going to be torn apart into scraps, and it will feel good-

 _This is gross but Neptune won't stop just because of that-_

I'm _gross but she won't stop because of that-_

For a second, in the fog of a fuck, Jupiter is disgusting again. Gross. But Neptune doesn't care, right now she sees Jupiter from above in more ways than one; she sees every facet of her grossness and sees through it, peering through frost and glass to the clouds beyond, _you're gross but I love you anyways_.

 _I'm gross-bad-wrong-sinning-disgusting — but Neptune still loves me — fucks me — touches me — loves me —_

Jupiter shudders under Neptune's hands.

(Really, Neptune is the one who's supposed to be the seductress, and both of them know it. But Jupiter is a siren song of temptation, too, in her own way. Neptune couldn't still her wicked tongue if she tried, and right now she's only using her tongue to _speak_.)

Jupiter simply _sobs_. Drawn, narrowing, expanding, unfolding; Neptune is larger than life. Neptune inside of her doesn't feel good the same way she feels against her clit, but Neptune inside of her is a blistering reminder of everything else Neptune is to her, a reminder of everything the Devil promised her in every person and every body.

Neptune returns to touching herself with her free hand, fingering herself like she's trying to hold herself inside of her body, and Jupiter's hands join her-

Jupiter comes around Neptune, only made of iron until she melts. Not molten iron, just… _molten_. She makes the most pathetic noise neither of them have never imagined, lowly, _love me, I'm sorry, fuck me, hurt me…_

"Neptune," Jupiter whimpers. "Neptune."

"Shh," Neptune croons. "I've got you. I've got you."

Jupiter keeps her nails perfectly short, but bloody crescents still line her palms, where she's folded in on herself hard enough to break skin.

* * *

"I'm sorry," Jupiter says, after they've cleaned up enough to get some sleep without needing to burn the sheets in the morning. One of her hands curls around the hem of a fresh blanket, wrapping it around them.

"Jupiter, is that your way of saying you're not done with the scene, and you want me to keep punishing you?"

"Oh, ha ha," Jupiter says. She's kind of using Neptune's hair as a pillow. "No, Neptune, I'm saying I'm sorry, for real this time."

"What for?" Neptune asks, slow and careful, half-expecting to have to beat something stupid out of Jupiter's head.

Jupiter shrugs a little. "It's fucked up."

"You're apologizing because you did something fucked up?"

"I'm apologizing because that was fucked up," Jupiter says, like she's saying something simple and trying to beat it into Neptune's head.

Jupiter expects Neptune to argue that it wasn't fucked up. _It wasn't fucked up that we were role-playing in the vein of the people who abused me._

"I disagree, obviously," Neptune says, according to expectations. "But so what if it was? You don't have to apologize for that," she continues, not according to expectations. Jupiter closes her eyes.

"...you're a real bitch, Neptune. Thanks."

"No problem, babe. It's my job."

It's funny, really.

Neptune has always aimed for being Bad. And now, she is terribly Bad, drinking and doing drugs and fucking girls, but… is she Bad or Good, fucking girls in the image of Good abusers?

If Good is abuse, then isn't Good bad? If Good is bad, then how do they get anything good out of playing at it, even having twisted it again?

Maybe it doesn't really matter. Even if they're Bad, they shouldn't have to feel bad.

Good and Bad have always been fake, anyways.

"You don't think badly of me, do you?" Jupiter asks. Her voice is more brittle than she wants it to be.

( _S_ _he literally just fucked the living shit out of me, I think if she didn't like me, she would have been a bit more hesitant. I_ know _this is just an intrusive thought catching on old habits-_ )

"Nah," Neptune replies. "Everyone wants me to punish them, you know. Even Venus. Even the Bonfire Captain."

" _J_ _esus_ , Neptune!" The anxiety is brutally defanged, murdered by Neptune's bad attitude.

Neptune laughs, and her eyes dip dark. She throws an arm around Jupiter properly, squeezing tight. Like water pressure. Like a blanket you won't take off.

"Really, Jupiter. You're okay."

And she is.


	3. Chapter 3

_What is the speed of sound through a belief system?_

 _-The Care and Feeding of Magical Creatures_

* * *

These are the facts:

Venus and Neptune are draped together over the couch, less than ten feet from the kitchen where Jupiter is cooking. Venus' head is in Neptune's lap, with most of her eyes closed, and Neptune is on the phone again, hammering at it hard enough that you would probably assume she was texting again.

None of this is unusual for them, save for the fact that Neptune is asking some very personal questions; seventeen of them so far.

"Hey Venus, what's your birthday?"

"Ah… don't tell me you don't remember?"

"I totally remember your birthday, Venus, I'm getting you presents and everything, I promise. I'm asking you what _year_ you were born in, because I'm too bored to do math."

"Uh, it was the year before the year that _you_ were born in?"

Venus doesn't like thinking about the fact that she's the oldest one, although she can't put a finger or wingtip on why. It's not even the mere fact that she's older, it's just… everything else.

"Mmm." Neptune presses her lips together. "Come on, come on. Uh, think of your favorite bands, were there any songs with numbers in them?"

"Uh… I don't know? 1989? 1945?"

"Guys!" Jupiter yells, and Venus smells ozone. "Breakfast is ready!"

These are the facts:

Neptune's phone is broken. Venus is perfectly happy to give her old phone to Neptune, but she doesn't actually remember the numbers to the password. Neptune would cry ironic tears in order to cover up unironic frustration, if becoming the Devil hadn't made her tears indistinguishable from every other ounce of bile.

But she goes ahead and tries Venus' latest shots in the dark.

"Oh my god, Venus, you actually used song lyrics as your password, you're such a dork. A veritable super-dork."

Venus rolls her eyes, getting up and floating into the kitchen to grab Jupiter's cooking. "Stop bullying me, Neptune?"

"Denied."

Neptune turns back to the phone, also shuffling over to grab food, when she opens the browser, and she sees _it_.

Venus can see out of the back of her head. She sees the look in Neptune's eye. She knows she's even more doomed than she already was.

"Venus, what are these search suggestions?"

"I don't know," Venus says. "I haven't used that phone in like, two years." It got taken away from her — which certainly didn't stop her from getting into ham radio — and she only got it back when they all started taking steps to seriously cut ties. Neptune's idea of cutting ties involves breaking and entering and vandalism, to Jupiter's chagrin.

"Okay, I'll take a look myself," Neptune says, tapping at the screen.

"Is anyone even _hungry?"_ Jupiter asks rhetorically, pulling off her apron.

Then porn music starts playing from Neptune's new phone, and Venus startles.

"Oh god," she says. "I _was_ hungry."

"I want to see," Jupiter says, and she leans over to get a look, misting through the air. "'Forced Heresy general thread?' Oh. Oh wow."

"These are actually kind of cute," Neptune reluctantly admits. Various pictures scroll across the screen. "Almost cute. Too bad most of these are fucking straight."

"Nah, Nep, see those ones, with the gay dudes?" Jupiter shrugs and steps away, grabbing plates laden with pancakes and depositing them on the table.

"Oh man, that's even worse. Venus, please tell me you weren't a fushoji."

"Oh _god_ ," Venus croaks out. Her entire body burns scarlet, an incandescent light. "Please no bullying! I won't have it!"

Neptune keeps reading, and she shoots Venus a grin.

"Jupiter, Neptune is still bullying me! Make her stop?"

"Neptune," Jupiter says. "Stop bullying Venus."

"Can't do it, babe, Venus didn't say the safeword."

 _You accidentally say the safeword out of the bedroom_ just once _, and you never live it down-_

 _And the awful part is that it actually kind of_ works _, because we're all troubled and traumatized into a twisted relationship with the word 'no'. It's positively_ easy _to say 'Mammon' in comparison._

 _But even worse than that is the fact that I'm probably going to accidentally say the safeword in public to someone else and they'll be like 'Wow, Venus, what does the Demon Prince of Greed have to do with anything-?'_

"Oh, hey, here's some lesbians," Neptune says mildly. "'Oh _no_ , my best friend turned into the Devil, and then she turned me gay!' I think you bookmarked this one, Venus. How in nine hells did you ever think you were a straight boy?"

"What! I? I thought all straight boys liked lesbian porn, okay!?"

Jupiter can't help herself, and she laughs out loud. But she sees the _look_ in Neptune's eyes — the kind of look that always comes with collateral damage — and she knows that she might not want to be in the splash zone until things cool down.

"Oh, gee, Venus, it's just too bad that both of your best friends are the Devil now, Venus," Neptune says. "I guess we'll just have to turn you… _double gay_ , won't we?"

"You're awful and you'll never let me live this down, will you?" Venus moans.

"It's your fault for having awful taste in porn."

"No? No! I don't have bad taste in porn! I just… I _used_ to have bad taste in porn!"

Jupiter starts digging into her pancakes.

* * *

When Venus was only a little kid, she had an imaginary friend, and his name was God.

She wouldn't have put it in those terms, of course — even the "atheists" knew that God wasn't imaginary, even if they didn't _worship_ him. But Venus' relationship with God was like the relationship of a child and their imaginary companion. God was her safety blanket, her confidant.

She was lonely. She couldn't see what other people could see; she couldn't see what failures other people might see in her, that they would choose to leave her alone.

 _God is omnibenevolent_ , her teacher at Sunday School had once said. Venus had gone to the library afterwards, cracking open a 500-page dictionary devoted solely to 'o' words:

 _Omnibenevolent. Adjective. All-loving; generally used in reference to THE LORD OUR GOD._

If God was all-loving, then by sheer logical necessity he had to love _her_ , too. There was nothing she could do to change that.

She spoke to God at night, while she laid down her head and closed her eyes. She imagined her head in his lap while he sang lullabies. Not like an old man in the sky, or like her father. Like the old man who had once lived next door, someone else's grandfather. He had let her read his books, stolen early from libraries. He had told her stories of when he was growing up and running away.

She imagined what God might be like, if she herself was made in the image of God. Like the books said, the books most people wouldn't let her read, because lay children could only misunderstand and mangle the word of God: _In the beginning, God made Adam Ha-Rishon as androgynos, or male and female alike; but Adam Ha-Rishon withered in loneliness, so God divided them into the male Adam and the female Eve._

Adam Ha-Rishon, made in the image of God. You weren't supposed to divide God, even in image; it was blasphemy even to imagine it.

And if God was alike the Adam Ha-Rishon, did God wither in loneliness, too? Would God divide himself?

(Was that why God made the Devil?)

"I'm sorry if it's true," Venus once murmured, staring up into the dead of her ceiling, her heart aching with remembered pain. "I'm sorry if you were ever lonely. I know what that's like. Even if you don't care, I'm still here for you."

God didn't say anything to her. She wondered if God was still lonely.

She wondered what Adam Ha-Rishon felt as their female facet was sundered. Like being split. Like having a rib torn from your chest.

Did it hurt?

* * *

Now, Venus' problems aren't as simple as she wishes they were.

She has a grip on morality, right? She doesn't need to let God or the Devil or anyone else override her own judgement, and she can choose her scruples. She also knows how to be honest, and how to lie, and how to be sincere, and how to be bitter. She doesn't have a religious or moral complex about who she is and how she wants to live in the world.

She just sort of wishes she was someone else, anyways, as a matter of personal taste.

Even now.

Looking at other people, Venus can always take them as they are. The Devil lets anyone be themself; she is the oldest dream, turning stories into reality.

But Venus looks at herself, and sometimes she can barely take herself at face value. The Devil made her story real, but who was the author of the story? Was the author a girl inventing herself against reality, or a dumb horny teenage boy?

It's unbearable. It's not _right_ that her story can end up so hopelessly entangled with its own negation; _you want to be a pretty gay girl, but maybe that's only because you're_ actually _a weird messed-up boy!_ There is nothing extricable from the negation; there is nothing which cannot be everted and read as a sign of some underlying maleness.

It's asymptotic. She knows she's only tripping herself up, _but that doesn't mean that she isn't tripping herself up._

This is probably why her period comes in.

No-one else still deals with that, as far as Venus knows, because it's only some stupid bullshit curse that God came up with to punish women. Becoming the Devil is an exercise in imperfection, but there are so many other ways to be imperfect, beyond going along with arbitrary divine torture — really, who would choose to become the Devil, and still go along with that?

 _Venus_ goes along with that, apparently. Brilliant.

Every iota of her being understands that she's being unfair to herself. This isn't just an arbitrary reality she has to live with; by God's own malice and her own inaction, by God's own apathy and her own misplaced self-flagellation, this is a reality _on purpose_.

She doesn't tell anyone about it, because… some things are just _too awkward_ to broach. And weird, and physically gross, and maybe kind of interpersonally gross, even if it isn't morally gross, and _honestly_ she should probably just say something before someone asks-

"Venus, are you alright?" Neptune asks.

They're lying on the couch again, streaming shitty television on Venus' laptop; she holds the computer to her stomach.

"Um. Er. Ah. Why do you ask?" Venus stammers out.

Neptune sighs. "Because you look fucking constipated and you've looked that way for hours."

"Shut up. I'm not constipated. I'm fine."

Neptune gives her a _look_. The patented number twelve 'I know you're fucking bullshitting about _something_ but I'm not quite how to push you on it, or if I should' look.

"Should I hold you down down?" Neptune asks, and Venus flushes like a red dwarf. "Until you admit what's wrong, I mean."

"No!" Venus stammers. "Don't, no sex!"

"I wasn't talking about _sex_ ," Neptune tries to say. Then she pauses. "Venus, are you on the rag," she asks rhetorically, which is to say that she already knows the answer.

"Augh. Yes I am, shut up." Venus slumps further back against the couch. "This sucks absolutely and I hope I'm annihilated from the face of the earth. Why did we ever decide that transforming ourselves into the physical manifestations of our internal conflicts was a good idea?"

Neptune pats her awkwardly; there are some hurts that words aren't suited to comforting. "It's hells better than the alternatives."

"I know. This is still awful and I still hope I'm annihilated. I am a fool. The most foolish fool to have ever lived. The most foolish fool to have ever fooled."

Sometimes Neptune wonders if she's doing the wrong thing, being as supportive as she is. Will the others lean on her too much, taking something that she can't afford to give, until she's dead and dry?

But as they are now, they don't drain her, because she only overflows. "You're a fool for being yourself?"

"No, I'm a fool for having… whatever hangup is doing this to me." Because she doesn't _really_ choose who and what she is, as the Devil, any more than she ever chose who she was as a human.

Being the Devil is only another way to be yourself, and sometimes that means you carry your baggage with you into your new body. You can choose who you are, but you'll always be _you_.

"You're still my girlfriend," Neptune says. "Even if you are the biggest fool in all of history. We can get that looked at, if you want."

"I think I'm going into shock," Venus says.

"...from the pain?" Neptune asks carefully.

"No, from the fact that we're girlfriends. It's too much. I'm going to faint."

"Venus, you are such a little shit," Neptune laughs.

"I was being serious though?"

* * *

When Venus was thirteen, she was still as much a child as ever, but she imagined that she needed to be tall. Strong.

"I don't want grape juice," she insisted stubbornly, and her father laughed and ruffled her hair.

"Just a sip, then," he said, the same way he would agree to let her have an extra cookie after dinner. She drank the consecrated wine and it tasted like rotting fruit. So sour it hurt her tongue. So bitter it made her ill.

The priest led the congregation in prayer and in song; his voice dripped with static and radio wire, the echo of a gamma ray burst all of the way on the other side of the spectrum.

She wasn't sure when it started. Her mind drenched with drink, she found herself floating in the divine light, like a corpse floating atop the salt of the dead sea. She found herself struck by the most immense, total realization possible:

 _She loved God. God loved her._

There was nothing extricable from the love; every iota of her being was united in a single overpowering urge to pour out her soul for GOD, and it wasn't even the _urge_ that was important. It was only the skin, like a shell covering the seed which was her love.

There was nothing apart from the love, or even against it. GOD could do nothing to reduce her love for Him; there was no possible world where her love would not _increase_ , because she saw that _everything_ was a sign of His love, by logical necessity. Omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, omnibenevolent; every unfolding facet of the universe could only be another facet of His love for her, His love for everything. _Even if it hurt her, no matter how badly she hurt._

Infinitely far away, her body was singing along with the rest of the congregation, one long perfect note in sync with the radio, every bit as singular and all-encompassing as GOD was. Perfect totality.

Infinitely far away, her voice cracked; the perfect note became imperfect, but she couldn't _stop singing_ , like the song was singing her-

The imperfect sound was the first chip in a fine sculpture. The vision strained and broke like the shattering of a Dutch tear.

She fell back into herself, thrown into her body again, and for a moment she grieved at the feeling of love she had lost. Then she remembered who she was again, and felt the most profound feeling of terror she had ever experienced.

She bent over and vomited all across her best shoes; stomach acid stained the leather, speckled with the blood of Jesus Christ.

"That's my boy," her father said with a hearty laugh. "I was always a lightweight, too."

She never spoke to God again.

* * *

"Look at yourself, Venus," Neptune says, reading through the script with perfect verve, an agglomeration of navel-gazing masturbation. "You're such a fucking sissy."

Venus is years away from the stupid kid she used to be, far away from transubstantiation and revelation, and she's still picking up where she left off. _Why is she doing this?_ She's lying back in their ginormous bed and she's so obviously vertiginous that Neptune can feel her skin going clammy even through her feathers.

"Mammon," Venus gasps out, and Neptune pulls her hand away from between Venus' legs. Neptune isn't even surprised.

And Neptune would know, really. Venus isn't just the girl with her heart on her sleeve; Neptune is the girl who sees through the bullshit. She doesn't need seventy-two eyes to look through the surface of a lake to the silt and rot in the lake-bed.

To Neptune, the face of things always fades into transparent irrelevance.

"I don't want to do this after all," Venus whispers.

"I heard you the first time," Neptune replies. She crawls further up onto the bed. "Do you want to talk about it?" _Please be comfy talking about it, if we've chased your head up your ass again I'll throw an awful shitfit the likes of which haven't been seen since the Flood._

"I don't know. It's really weird and I don't know where I'm at right now." Venus closes all of her eyes, which is quite the feat.

"You can take your time," Neptune says. Venus looks like she's somewhere at the intersection of 'horny' and 'nauseous' and 'REGRET' which is completely understandable. Neptune looks like the Devil, which is to say, she looks like herself. She never changed on the outside; only on the inside.

"I guess it was super hot when I first got off on this kind of thing," Venus admits, and she blushes. "On this dumb fetish stuff. And it was super hot when you reminded me of it. But it's not actually hot to do it now, though?"

Neptune leans in and kisses Venus, feeling the other girl's skin warm and brighten under her lips. Venus is smiling a bit, when Neptune pulls away.

"Do you know why?" Neptune asks. She cups Venus' cheek, trying to see through her.

Something she doesn't like to make a production out of is just how much she wants Jupiter and Venus to be honest and open. Not just because that _makes for a good relationship_ or whatever, but because it kind of makes her horny.

"I guess back then, I got to imagine myself as a girl?"

"'Imagine', huh?"

"Ugh, you know what I mean," Venus replies. "I wasn't trying to imagine my way out of some... _self-image problem_. Not back then. But now it's complicated and unhelpful and not even any fun to imagine myself as a boy imagining himself as a girl." Venus bites her lip.

"I suppose there are much more interesting mind games to play," Neptune says slowly, drawing out the words. Venus shudders; under Neptune's shadow, she can't stop herself from imagining it. _Mind games and mind fucks._

"Haha, um. When you were dragging that old fetish stuff up again, it made me feel… embarrassed? Really embarrassed. And… small? But also good. I guess that's what confused me. Your attitude felt good."

 _I want to fuck your shy little smile until you come around me._ "We can always dream up some _new_ dumb fetish stuff, if you like, Vee."

Venus jitters with _want_ , and Neptune leans in to plant wet kisses on her neck, leaving smears of oily black behind where her lips pull away.

"L-like what?"

"Why don't _you_ tell _me_?" Neptune croons. "Tell me again if I'm on the wrong path, or if you want us to stop completely. But tell me: do you want to feel small? Embarrassed?"

"Yes-s," Venus stutters, and whines. "You're too good at this!"

 _No, I just saved up literal years of dirty talk and heresy and cruel trappings for a rainy day_. Every last possible wicked thought, hidden inside her and waiting patiently for the right moment to pour out and spill over. "I would be a pretty shitty Devil if I couldn't make your knees weak from twenty paces with only the sound of my sexy, sexy voice."

"Gyah, you sound like you're trying to record an ASMR video." Venus shudders in Neptune's arms, ashamed of her next thought. "Could you… not be the Devil?"

 _What._ "What?"

"I don't mean that — I don't want you to change who you are or how you act. Could you just. Not be the Devil, for a little while?"

"You're going to have to be a little more clear about what you mean there, Venus."

"I'm tired of… Abrahamic theology getting tangled up in everything." It's a strange thought to be thinking, when their entire world is _shaped_ by Abrahamic theology. "Even sex."

"Oh, well that's easy. We can dream up some new theology, too."

Venus laughs, and Neptune scowls.

"You think I'm fucking with you but I'm 100% totally serious. I mean, _I_ could be a god." Neptune nips at one of Venus' nipples, and Venus gasps. "Hell, I'm already a sex goddess, aren't I?"

"Ahhh-! You… don't t-take this the wrong way, but, but you don't stack up very well compared to God," Venus offers.

"That's like saying an apple doesn't compare to an orange. No-one compares very well to an ontological principle."

Venus laughs again between her moans, breaking through dignity and vulnerability.

"But really," Neptune says. "If we went far enough back in time, people would worship us as gods."

"That w-wouldn't _actually_ make us gods, though, Neptune!"

"What does, then?"

 _Nnn, that's a little deep for dirty talk._

"Come on…" Neptune says teasingly, and she grinds against Venus' hip. "Wouldn't you want to _worship_ me?"

"I won't say I don't…" Venus murmurs, and her smile widens. "What sort of goddess are you, then?"

"Isn't it obvious?" Neptune says, sultry and low. "Look at me, all ocean and ooze and ichor and bile. Forget Baphomet, I'm a completely different black goat. The primordial soup giving rise to one thousand young."

 _That's rather a stretch_ , Venus thinks, but Neptune reaches down between her own legs, getting her fingers wet with oily slick and then bringing them up to draw angles across Venus' chest; and what Venus actually says is: "Does that make _me_ one of your young, then, Shub-Niggurath?"

"Of course it does." Neptune shuffles back on the bed, continuing to smear iridescent-black arousal across Venus' body as she goes, and she stares up at Venus through lewd, lidded eyes. "I'm still inside of you, you know. Do you know why blood and the ocean both taste of salt?"

Venus is spellbound by the expanse of the story Neptune is telling; she can see where it's going, but she can't see where it ends. "No," she breathes.

"It's because they're both the same. You carry a little bit of the ocean, a little bit of _me_ , with you wherever you go."

And Venus isn't just flesh and blood anymore, but her blood pounds so hard that she can feel it in her skin and hear it in her ears. Suddenly, every heartbeat feels like it could be Neptune pumping her fingers inside of her.

"You are my creature," Neptune says slowly, almost tasting the words. _You're mine, to love, and cherish, and fuck._

"I'm yours," Venus echoes, staring at Neptune with lovely doe-eyes, and Neptune is painfully aware that she could reach out with hand or voice, and _break her._

It puts a pang in her chest. She would never do it, it's a thought to flinch away from. But knowing that she _could_ makes the world snap into hyperreal clarity. It makes her ache with the desire to run in the opposite direction, and _bend_ Venus instead, for the both of them. Black blood stains the inside of her skin grey.

"You owe me everything," Neptune hisses, softly and almost gently, teasing more of this sex story out of her lips. "I cared enough about you and yours, to stir your oceans until your ancestors could crawl out of the mud. You should throw yourself at my feet with your devotion to me, just because you have the chance to look upon me now."

"Thank you," Venus whispers, infinitely far away from herself, in Neptune's world.

"Don't thank me with your words," Neptune says. "You can put your tongue to a much better use."

She's sitting across from the headboard on their bed and spreading her legs, and for a moment Venus flounders, jarred back into self-awareness; then she falls back into the story and sits up, finding a new way to fit their bodies together.

And Neptune watches Venus, crawling across the bed when she could be flying.

Venus isn't graceful, but that's okay. She's always earnest and dedicated, instead. She runs her tongue along the inside of Neptune's thighs, collecting ichor to pool in her lips; her mouth banishes the stagnant chill that Neptune feels in her blood.

(Neptune looks like she's made of hate, a wellspring of poison, but she tastes normal. Human.)

"Hhaaah, that's good…" Neptune pants, as Venus drags her tongue across her entrance; she curls her fingers through Venus' hair, and gently pulls her in, pressing her against her own body. The teeming ache in her cunt intensifies, and finally subsides in Venus' lips.

It's like holding Venus' head underwater, in more ways than one. Neptune has to spread her legs wider to give Venus more room, and objectively speaking Venus might as well be drowning; but she's still looking up at Neptune with real love, and she's trying to drink every inch of Neptune in.

Venus thrusts her tongue into Neptune; practically suckling at the slickness and arousal inside of her. She wraps her hands around Neptune, grabbing her ass as if for leverage, and she pulls her tongue back out, running it against Neptune's clit with long, forceful licks.

"Good," Neptune says again, letting out a long sigh.

Venus doesn't need to be told twice, redoubling her efforts with an enthusiasm that Neptune can _feel_. Coiling her insides up, warm and hazy and tight.

"Good… yeah, just like that," Neptune goes on, her voice husky, and Venus squirms between her thighs, or maybe it's Neptune squirming against her-

Neptune comes, rocking so hard against Venus that Venus can barely keep rhythm, and she dissolves on Venus' tongue more literally than anyone else can, leaking pleasure and satisfaction across her partner and against the bed-sheets, almost forgetting what she's supposed to be doing with the two of them.

When Neptune grips Venus' hair to pull her away, her mouth and jaw are stained and dripping with mottled ink, a beautiful mess.

"Did I… did I do good?" she asks, breathing through her wings, thirsty for approval like she's stranded in the desert. Rivulets of Neptune run down her chin to fall on her breasts.

"You did _very_ good," Neptune replies, shifting in their bed to steal a kiss, a taste of herself, and a bit of Venus' smile for herself. "You have pleased me, so... I will… grant you a reward as my _disciple_."

Venus giggles, lightheaded and lighthearted, and Neptune's stolen smile twists dark and teasing.

"Do you think I'm joking, Venus?"

"No!" Venus yelps, but she's still smiling, and the teasing is infectious. "Not at all… _my goddess_."

"I could get used to that," Neptune says wryly. "I'm your goddess. Are you _just_ my creature?"

Venus intends to say something comparatively _normal,_ like 'I'm your good girl'. But they're telling a new story, and the story is a spell, and the spell is powerful, and it's _their_ spell, just for them-

"I'm your sacrifice," Venus says, and she can feel her pussy flutter. "An offering, from me to you."

Neptune sucks in a breath, and then she sucks in the skin in the curve between Venus' shoulder and neck, and feels Venus ascend in their embrace.

There isn't a square inch of her skin that isn't drenched in her own wickedness, streaming over the edge of the bed to soak into the floor, sublimating into the smell of sex and desire and sin.

Neptune drenches Venus just as thoroughly, as if for Venus to shed her worries by being blotted out. Blotting out Venus' mind until she doesn't have to think about anything at all, save for Neptune's fingers pumping inside of her, each heartbeat stretching out in delirium.

Venus floats in Neptune like she once floated in the divine light, and it's beautiful because now she is present in _herself_ , complete in herself even as she's devoted to Neptune in this moment _._

Neptune pours herself down Venus' throat; she fills Venus' insides with tongue and fingers and wickedness on every front. Venus is a vessel for everything that overflows in Neptune, a receptacle, a hollow, a vial. She is filled with every possible wicked thought like every slow, tender, inescapable thrust; until she, too, overflows, filled to the breaking point, shattering across the bedspread.

She screams Neptune's name like she screams for God.

* * *

They're sitting in the bathtub with the drain open, and Neptune is flowing clear against Venus' skin, scrubbing away impossible iridescent oils from where they cling in Venus' wings.

Venus' eyes cling hungrily to Neptune, the glint of adoration, and maybe something else.

"You can spit it out, you know," Neptune says, and Venus breaks into laughter again.

" _Shub-Niggurath_ , Neptune? Really?"

Neptune shrugs. "Don't judge. That was based on a wet dream I had when I was, like… fourteen?"

"And you say _I'm_ a super-dork."

"Oh no, you caught me. Don't tell Jupiter. My reputation as a vaguely aloof mean girl would never ever recover."

Venus snorts. "Your secret is safe with me. But now I know _you_ have no ground to bully _me_ for being a dork!"

"I'll just bully you for something else. I'm very creative."

Just like that, Venus is exactly where she was before, half-embarrassed and half-happy, and Neptune loves these kinds of moments, throwing clear clarity through murky water.

A lot of the time, Neptune's teasing is only another language of love: _I love you, warts and all_. But when her girlfriends lean into into it, it becomes another story: _y_ _ou trust me enough to believe that I love you_ for _the things I tease you about, rather than in spite of them. You trust me enough to relax and be yourself_.

Why does it feel so _good_ merely to be so trusted? It's a kind of redemption and healing she never expected or asked for. She never quite realized that she was hurting without this.

"You know," Venus mumbles into Neptune's chest. "Just for a few minutes, it was nice to be loved by a god who was enough of a person for me to love back."

 _That's a low bar_ , Neptune thinks, but on some level she totally understands. She wants to breach the vault of heaven and annihilate every possible Godhead, but other people _just want a kinder God_.

And maybe that's actually a high bar to reach, but she was able to clear that bar anyways, and it felt good.

"I love you so much," Neptune whispers, and she realizes that she's _crying_ , just a little bit _._ Crystal clear tears trace down her cheeks.

"Neptune-? Oh, don't cry!"

"I will cry if I want to and nothing can stop me," Neptune says.

Venus reaches up and wipes Neptune's tears away, to mingle with the bathwater and sin, washing down the drain.

"I love you too," Venus says softly, and she kisses Neptune at the corner of her mouth, where paint begins to dry.


	4. Chapter 4

_…the overt meaning of "the trinity" is "God"._

 _The theosophic meaning of "the trinity" is "completion"._

 _This we derive from the logical structure of the hypostases. The Father is not the Son is not the Holy Spirit, but all three are God; A is not B is not C, but all three are equivalent to the set [A, B, C]. Only through the completed threefold set itself can any given pair within the set be resolved with each other._

 _This precise shape of this meaning only resolves into greater fidelity through further analysis. The triangle is the most stable of all geometric forms, defined by three points; the geometric plane itself — containing all geometric forms — is likewise defined by three points._

 _The sum total of the cosmos is trialogue between playwright, actor, and set; between God, Man, and Nature. In the subatomic physics of the physical world, each baryonic particle which gives us substance is itself composed of three quark particles with three different values of color charge._ _In Jewish tradition, the human soul itself is tripartite, possessed of nefesh, ruach, and neshamah._

 _In English, "holy trinity" is homologous to "wholly trinity". "Wholly", with entirety, with totality; "whole", a thing-in-itself, fully formed. The consonant structure of "trinity" is TRNT — note the similarity with the consonant structure of "entirety", NTRT! Likewise, "trinity" shares an exact consonant structure with "eternity"!_

 _"Eternity", an unbounded and infinite span of time. Infinity,_ _"the only reasonable numbers are zero, one and infinity", yet another set of three. Three numbers — but what of numbers?_

 _God is ultimately and fundamentally unified and One; the root of all evil and corruption is in the false idol of duality. Duality, Two. One plus Two is Three…_

 _…I leave the semiotic analysis of "trinity" in other languages as an exercise for the reader…_

* * *

There are countless, endless things for the Devil to do, in a world where the Devil can be anyone.

There is no school for the Devil to attend, not the way there used to be. Their summer vacation lasts forever, even into fall, winter, and spring; they're edging out into "adulthood", whatever the hell that's supposed to mean. They work, but they work for themselves, in every sense of the words.

Some nights, Venus spends hours awake, tinkering into the dawn with telescopes and radio receivers. She watches distant stars and planets and older things, drinking in their most private secrets; as if she could collect them and hold them in her cupped hands, just by coming to know them as old friends. Sometimes, she hears their voices on the radio and feels like an archaeologist for something she can never touch.

Sometimes, when Neptune sleeps, her skin runs over with watercolors, leaching across the bedsheets in dizzying chromatographics. The colors are inchoate, less than perfectly reall smeared lines like cracks opening up into nothing less than a feeling. When they're all awake, she throws the sheets into the laundry and then goes off to an attic, daubing her fingertips in the ink and violently dark dye that spills from her palm like an oil slick.

"Holy shit," Jupiter says, holding up a length of the canvas that Neptune has been painting, splattered with the image of a dream that most people would have chosen to forget. "This is terrifying."

"It's not supposed to be," Neptune says. She smiles, a little bittersweet, and then her lips twist into a jagged smirk. "But I'm glad to please."

She boxes most of them up where no one will see them, and throws the rest into the lake.

Jupiter… well…

"What do you think?" Jupiter asks, holding eight instruments in fifteen arms, already a good few steps of the way towards being the world's greatest one-woman band.

Venus, Neptune, and eleven other devils clap, some of them more enthusiastically than others.

"So, is this a time-passing hobby, or a passion-project hobby?" Algol asks, her voice a little too intense.

"No-one cares, Algol," Ruchbah says. "For the record, I thought it was awesome."

"That's what _we_ said," Neptune grumbles. "'Oh, you're my girlfriends, you're _supposed_ to say that-'"

Venus claps a hand over Neptune's mouth. "Don't be mean, Neptune. I mean, we do agree on the 'awesome' thing, though."

"Mrrglphpt," Neptune echoes.

The impromptu concert is over, and so the three of them walk from the open pavilion and through the clearing. They all know that Jupiter _could_ carry everything, if she needed to, but Venus carries Jupiter's guitar and trumpet, and Neptune carries her flutes, regardless.

Girls and boys and people of other kinds are scattered across the grass and earth; some of them are kissing, some of them are hugging, some of them are huddled together in skinship, some of them are fucking, some of them are making love. All as often in groups as in pairs.

Othello weaves silk into string into rope, draping it around the edges of an imaginary human being; Tycho and Delilah compete against each other to create the most impressive sculpture, as imposing in size and as elaborately beautiful as demonically possible. One of them is doing detail work on the graven image of three faces, seven meters above the ground.

"-that's why ''liberation' theology' is a crock of shit," Neptune says. "It's just a way for assholes to smuggle in God's judgement under the guise of God's would-be loving-kindness."

"I don't like God either," Jupiter says, running a finger across the back of a hand. "But if someone else wants to ignore the God on the radio, and say that there's a _real_ omnibenevolent God somewhere out there, and pay attention to the _idea_ of that goodness… I dunno, I think it's silly, but I'm not in any place to tell them off?"

"Maybe the _real_ idea of goodness is the friends we made along the way," Venus says.

"Die," Neptune replies, rather charitably. "Anyways, even if there _was_ an omnibenevolent God-"

"There is," Jupiter points out. "I mean, he obviously doesn't exist, but some people worship the idea of him, and ideas are real too?"

"-people would just use him as an excuse to worship the radio God. The 'idea' of God is fucking poisoned by the God that actually exists. Absolutely. You can't be a fucking radical or liberationist while worshipping the fuckboy who invented structural oppression and called it 'thermodynamics'."

"Haha, okay, I get it." Jupiter laughs. "You've been reading."

"I have _not_ been fucking _reading,_ shut up."

"You wouldn't bother with the words 'structural oppression' in place of a curse word."

"I would too."

"Yeah, Jupiter," Venus says. "Neptune isn't anti-intellectual, she's just a bitch."

"You see, babe?" Neptune throws an arm around Venus' shoulder. "Venus understands me."

"Doesn't count," Jupiter says. "Understanding you takes way more effort than calling you a 'bitch'. Everyone knows that you're a bitch."

Venus tries to frown, but it comes out as more of a blush. "Well, if I don't understand Neptune yet, then I guess I need to study her in more detail."

"DIE."

* * *

It's getting dark when they get back to their cabin, and the first thing they do when Jupiter's instruments are packed up is grab one of Venus' telescopes.

Venus slings it across her back, wrapping it up in a picnic blanket that Neptune long ago dyed indigo, and they set out again, keeping half of their attention on the sky.

"So here's a question for the census," Venus says. "Given the three of us, how many 'relationships' are we in?"

They're walking down the trail together when she asks the question. She's floating weightlessly above the ground as she goes, taking notes on a chart of some kind or another, chemistry or digraphs or emanations. Neptune would also be walking and reading at the same time, but she's too busy with other things, like holding Jupiter's hands.

Jupiter, on her part, just blinks. "We have a census?"

"Of course we have a census," Neptune says.

"Since when?"

"Like, since last year?"

"Oh."

Neptune and Jupiter are walking behind Venus, for a given value of 'behind' — the older girl is technically facing them, but she's looking down the trail with the eyes and wings erupting from her back. She's walking backwards, or floating backwards, rather. Neptune is wearing Jupiter's old jacket because it smells nice and feels nice.

("No, Venus, you can't have it! You get her old hairband, you can't have her jacket, too!"

("What? But? I wasn't even asking for her jacket! It would make my eyelids itch! It wouldn't even fit me?")

("IT'S MINE NOW, BITCHES!")

Neptune is wearing Jupiter's old jacket, because it smells like Jupiter, and beneath _that_ she's wearing a shirt that reads _mine is bigger than yours_ , because she can. Their collective hike has her overheating and tired, but her sweat runs paradoxically cold.

Jupiter is wearing a _new_ jacket which is about three times warmer and cozier than her old one, because they're in the middle of the woods, and her girlfriend is chilly, and she herself gets grouchy and sluggish when she's too cold. Folded in by air pressure and the weight of herself.

Venus just taps her pen against her clipboard, splattering specks of maroon ink across her papers. "It's an important question, girls."

"Why though?" Neptune asks.

"It's probably bookkeeping," Jupiter says with a shrug.

Venus' lips draw into a thin line. "No, not just bookkeeping! Enumeration is important, for Nectar resonance, and Manna-!"

"Yes," Neptune drawls, insincere again. "What would we do without numerology?"

"It still sounds like bookkeeping to me," Jupiter says. "Just, you know. _Mystical_ bookkeeping. But if it's important, it's important. What's the problem?"

Venus flips a page over the top of her clipboard. "So, by all accounts, we're technically in three relationships. Me and Jupiter, me and Neptune, and you two together, right?"

"Right," Jupiter says. Neptune nods noncommittally.

"But just saying that we're in three relationships doesn't convey anything about the structure of our relationships! A polyamorous relationship with three individual links could look like… four people in a chain!" As if to punctuate her explanation, eyes ripple across her skin; first in a line of four, then a three-pointed star- "Or a single person with three partners!"

Neptune smirks at the last, then she covers her mouth with her free hand, playing at stifling a cough. "Hrk, _Jupiter's harem_ , ack, ahem."

Jupiter blushes so hard that her entire body physically darkens, from her head to her toes; lifeblood drifts to her skin willingly, so deeply unlike the angry colors of bruises and welts.

"I'd join Jupiter's harem," Venus says brightly.

"Jupiter has a harem?" Neptune says, a little bit too innocently. " _Sweet_. I'd join her harem too."

Jupiter looks down and away. "You tease me, but don't bluff if you're not prepared for me to call you on it."

"Hah!" Neptune cackles. "I'd love to see you try!"

They keep up the trail, rounding into open air beneath the vault of heaven.

"Maybe we're just in _one_ relationship," Neptune says, but Venus shakes her head.

"Three in one?" Venus asks rhetorically. "Mmm, no. Too reductive. Terrible ambiance. Bad."

"Ambiance is fucking garbage, Venus, I hate to see you bother with it."

Venus laughs. "You're just mad because I told you that there's no difference between 'aesthetic' and 'ambiance'."

Jupiter rolls her eyes and twirls a lock of Neptune's hair around idle hands.

* * *

The air feels thin at the top of the hill — where the copse and wood have been bent away — but of course, they're not far above from where they've made their home. The camp and the cabins are a bit over an hour away, distant sparks in the forest.

This late in the day, the sun has finally dipped under the horizon, and the stars are glittering, pooling in the whorling abyss of the sky. Jupiter sweeps three arms lazily through the air, and the few clouds in the sky drift afield, exposing further stretches of the void.

"How often does this sort of thing happen, do you think?" she asks, while Venus sets up the telescope. Neptune has already and inexplicably laid out the blanket for them to sit on, although it doesn't matter _that_ much.

There are no glaring cities to blot out the soft light of the sky; no-one wants to live anywhere _near_ the Summer Scouts, except for the people who are already like them. They've snuffed out sterilizing and blinding arc-lights and wires in exchange for the quiet red cinder-glow of incense; light to see by, without choking out the firmament.

It's the smallest, littlest things that mean the most. In the beginning, God made Adam Ha-Rishon from the infinitesimal soil of the earth, dust cascading upon dust until it was more than dust itself, greater than the sum of its parts; in the end, one thousand trivial and inconsequential joys can sum and gather to the size of the world.

"Not actually that often," Venus replies, taking her attention away from her calibrations and collimations for just a moment. "The planets don't actually ever completely line up, of course…"

"What about the epicycles?" Neptune asks.

"It doesn't matter if the epicycles are janky and busted. They're busted in basically predictable ways." Venus ruffles one of her wings. "I _predict_ that this isn't an everyday occurrence."

"Don't be a complete smartass about it, or I'll have to bully you."

"…am I a smartass?" Venus asks.

"'The overt meaning of 'smartass' is 'someone who irritates others by being a sarcastic know-it-all'. The theosophic meaning of 'smartass' is 'Neptune's fluffier girlfriend'. This we derive from the nature of Venus, who is very smart, and has a great ass-'"

"I do _not-!"_

"You're both smartasses," Jupiter says. "We're all smartasses. And yes, you do. Can we look at the planets now?"

Venus crooks a finger, beckons them over, and they crowd around the eyepiece of her telescope. Far above, they can see-

"What are we looking at?"

"It's you, Neptune," Venus says. "Sort of. You know what I mean. Your, um, namesake."

"Holy shit." Neptune peers through the glass and mirrors to the distant blue twinkle beyond. More than a mere smudge on the eyepiece, but less than the full disk they could make of the moon on any other night. "I'm a fucking ugly bitch tonight. I approve."

"Lemme see-!"

Neptune makes way for Jupiter, who plonks herself down in front of the telescope.

"I expected worse," Jupiter says, eyeing the planet where oceans of methane crush themselves into jagged diamonds. "You're beautiful, as always. What about me?"

Venus turns seven eyes through and across the sky, reaching out and adjusting the telescope again without bothering to look through the eyepiece.

"I think the great red spot is getting smaller," Jupiter says, her voice a bit hushed.

"The symbolic implications are _immense_ ," Neptune says, her voice also hushed, but infinitely less serious. "What do you think, Venus?"

"I don't know? It's rude to do theosophy on other people, and I'm not Jupiter."

"What about the other planets?" Neptune asks. "We've gotta see Saturn."

"Slow down, Neptune," Jupiter switches eyes on the telescope. "I'm trying to savor the moment here."

"It doesn't matter, anyways," Venus says, apologetically. "There's going to be another conjunction next month, but right now, it's only our planets."

Jupiter watches the whorl of the storm, swollen across the surface of her namesake planet. The whirlwind is always something; a voice, a body, a throne, an impulse.

"Really, is the storm actually getting smaller?"

"Ask me again in a year," Venus says softly.

Jupiter steps away, and Neptune shoves her eye directly against the telescope to no ill effect, as shapeless as water.

"You look fine," Neptune says. "Just as turbulent as always."

"Neptune, you're trying to reassure me about the equivalent of a pimple."

"What? Your great red spot is _not_ a pimple, it's _obviously_ an eye."

"I actually would have said it was a freckle," Venus mutters.

When they turn to Venus the planet, there's not that much to see.

"Honestly, you're prettier than your planet is," Neptune says. "'FEAR NOT' versus 'tepid coffee with cream', and all."

"Isn't Venus the planet with the runaway greenhouse effect?" Jupiter asks.

"Er, yes." Venus looks away. "And clouds of sulfuric acid."

"Okay, that's pretty cool," Neptune admits. "Fire and brimstone!"

"I said sulfuric acid, not sulfur! But… I _guess_ there's a connection…"

Neptune gives her spot to Jupiter, while Venus is busy staring into space, thinking about chemistry.

"I don't know," Jupiter says. "The planet isn't _that_ boring — even if Venus is still prettier."

A freckle dots the back of her left hand, drawing the eye as easily as it always does.

* * *

There are countless, endless ways for the Devil to know herself, in a world where the Devil can be everyone.

Sometimes, Neptune is just barely on this side of liquid. There are great lakes at the bottom of the sea, more than three thousand meters below the surface and wide enough to swallow you whole; places where brine is so thick and choking that it collects beneath and apart from the greater ocean. No life you or I would recognize can survive in the poison; not in the scourging and scouring of the salt and methane.

The lake is suspended around Neptune like nacre dripping from a pearl. The lake _is_ Neptune, the weight of her, the wickedness spilling out without ever really leaving her at all. Neptune as a place as well as a person, more than waist-deep.

She soaks straight through Jupiter's clothes; glistering black and bilious bubbles burst against her skin like human kisses, spackling every nameless scar and stitch of flesh as if Jupiter were her canvas.

"Is there something you're trying to tell me?" Jupiter asks. Her voice is exasperated, because they have played this game before. But she still smiles widely. Even now, her breath still hitches when she feels Neptune drip down her side.

"Something like that," Neptune says, the words literally pouring out of her and out of her grinning mouth. "Do we need Venus to _translate?"_

I don't know," Venus replies. Awash with the sea, she kisses Jupiter, hard, tasting of her sweet nothings just as well as the omnipresent salt of the ocean. "Ah-! I'm, a little _busy_."

Neptune's wicked thoughts congeal, taking on more substance, and she brushes against the meandering, forking lines of scar tissue along Jupiter's shoulder, where the girl once tried to catch lightning. It worked, really; and she learned how to do it properly, too, without being burned alive. But the memory of that first misadventure still remains, where none of her other lightning-scars have lingered. Jupiter shudders, and Venus is there to catch her, meeting her lips again and taking her hands.

"I'm glad to see you know how to keep yourself occupied," Neptune coos.

"Bite me-!" Venus replies.

Wicked teeth of coral and shale nip into the root of one of Venus' wings, and Venus squeals, trailing off into a shriek; she jerks so sharply she bonks her face against Jupiter's nose.

Jupiter stares dumbly at Venus. "I didn't mean that literally," Venus squeaks.

"That's true," Neptune says. "But this isn't the first time we've talked about biting…"

"Time and place, Neptune," Jupiter says, but she's still fucking _smiling_ , and she giggles, and headbutts Venus right back.

Venus slips down into Neptune for a moment, black water and brack splashing across her and Jupiter alike. The water coils around them like seaweed, like Neptune's tongue, and then an undertow drags the both of them under completely.

Neptune laps against Venus as water against a shore, and Venus couldn't breathe lightly even if she could breathe at all. Neptune is the water, but not all of the water is Neptune; the water is sin and only so much of that sin is meant for Venus to feel. Base thoughts wrap around her waist from behind, pure ideas spoken in the language of bile; a dissolved curve of innuendo traces the inside of her thigh, craft and cruelty and imaginary caress driving her mad with sensation and want. Neptune loves to make Venus come undone piece-by-piece.

Jupiter is hardly in better straits, metaphorically _or_ literally; Neptune's arms hook around her as real shapes in the slipperiness of the surreal ocean, achingly tangible. One hand reaches between her legs to tease her sensitive clit, stoking her arousal and enjoying the pleased wiggle she gets in return, a mirror image of Venus and an echo of every other time Neptune has done this to her, never really any less enjoyable for the repetition…

And yet, Jupiter still has the presence of mind to reach around Neptune, to take Venus and meet her lips, exhaling wind and breath into the other girl's lungs like God breathed life into Adam. Venus suckles at Jupiter like a lifeline for all that the surface and the air is well less than a meter above.

"You two are just _adorable_ ," Neptune murmurs as she pulls away from between them and to the side, her voice perfectly clear in the water, the same way Jupiter's voice carries on the wind.

This is normally the kind of thing that Venus might object to, but she's busy kissing Jupiter and carrying on where Neptune left off, and Jupiter is too being kissed and finger-fucked to even imagine feeling embarrassed by Neptune's teasing. There are more important things do, and more enjoyable things to feel.

Venus slides her fingers into Jupiter, filling her with slow, forceful strokes, as if to push further life-breath from her body, just as surely as she also leaves Jupiter squirming and writhing; well and truly _fucked_ until she relaxes into Venus' embrace with the ease of contentment and familiarity alike.

Neptune just smirks at the display, peppering kisses across the lip-locked faces of her girlfriends.

When Jupiter comes, shaking in Venus' arms and Neptune's grip, Neptune speaks again: "I can hardly give Venus _all_ of the fun," she says. "She seems to be having such a good time with her girlfriend." And in the fog of afterglow, Jupiter half-tenses, half-jitters, as if she has to fear the ministrations of two lovers instead of one.

Then Neptune takes to Venus, instead, finding familiar sensitive spots and leaving her shrieking.

* * *

In the beginning of time, God created Lucifer as Seraph, highest among angels, and bid her cover her feet so as not to touch the impure earth, bid her cover her face so as not to grace an impure world with her visage. And yet, the Seraph was also the loathsome poisonous serpent, crawling upon her belly. For this, God banished her from holiness, and named her highest and lowest among the Watchers.

Sometimes, Venus like to watch, too.

Not with the awful vicarious _sadness_ she used to call voyeurism, but with something slightly more honest and sweet, sensitive but not raw. She loves to feel her girlfriends, and to hear the sound of them, but there is something scintillating in the eye which sits at an angle to all other pleasures.

"F-fhuck!" Jupiter gasps, floating as a storm cloud and holding Neptune's face to her pussy. Each inch of skin scatters thousands of photons in a moment, and Venus catches all of them, burning against dozens of retinae. Light draws time out until the sight of Jupiter's every exquisite spasm is endless and savored, even while the sound of her every panting breath still hurtles by in only seconds.

Neptune is in substantial flesh again, 'only' a girl drenched in obscenity, holding one hand against Jupiter's thigh and the other against her navel. Droplets of water and indigo run down her front, a backdrop to Neptune's attention; she presses a series of firm, wet kisses from Jupiter's clit to the bottom of her slit, and then drags her tongue back up, her mouth literally overflowing with stygian blue drool.

An armful of hands curl their fingers through Neptune's dark hair, reassuring pressure-points on her skull and an affectionate grip to hold her close, a casual sign of her appreciation for all of the pleasure that Neptune is bringing her now. Neptune has learned so many interesting secrets of the body, of Jupiter's body, and her lips and tongue put them to such good use, willfully drawing out ragged gasps and husky breath like drawing lightning from amber.

Jupiter hardly holds herself back, allowing her moans to crackle out. And why would she hold herself back? It makes Neptune happy to know that she can make Jupiter feel good, because she's happy to know that Jupiter feels good; she is getting off in the absolute clarity of getting someone else off.

Of course, the other reason that Jupiter doesn't hold back is that there's no-one to hide from, least of all Venus. All of this, she simply watches silently, taking it all in.

She gnaws her lip, watching the vision of loveliness before her. Her girlfriends are so _beautiful_ , it still amazes her that she can live in a world where they exist. _Fuck_ , she's gay. Her girlfriends make out or eat each other out and they suck her gaze in like a beam of light down a black hole.

Neptune's mouth lingers, with slow, deliberate motions, probably drawn out to look good for Venus as well as to edge Jupiter, but even knowing it's put-on doesn't make it less hot. Jupiter struggles not to thrash out from Neptune's grasp, and Venus' thoughts twin twofold, _I love the way they look when they love and feel like this_ and _I want to feel that for myself_ , but she can't juggle both kinds of appreciation at once.

She reaches down and begins to touch herself, imagining herself in Jupiter's place, feeling the kiss and caress of Neptune's mouth; warm, wet and unyielding. The interplay pouring through her eyes already leaves wetness gathering between her legs and makes her want want _want_ -

"What are you doing?" Jupiter gasps more than asks, staring at Venus. Even Neptune slows down with the pace of the distracted, rather than the pace of the languid.

"What, um-" Venus stammers. "Wha-at does it look like?"

"It looks like you're getting off," Jupiter husks out, while Venus fills herself, while Neptune likewise demonstrates the many liberties of an unfettered tongue. "Not that I'm _against_ it but if you're watching us, I want to watch you, too."

Venus cocks her head. "But you _can_ watch?"

"And you look needy," Jupiter replies. "You can look needier."

Venus closes her eyes and whines. She can all but hear Neptune smirking, a shift in the way she moves her mouth; she tries to slow down her own frenetic masturbation, but that only makes her pussy ache with greater denied lust.

"Look, Venus," Jupiter says, her voice clear against the backdrop of Neptune's cunillingus. "Look."

Venus opens her eyes again, and she clearly sees Jupiter, tense in delight; wrapping her thighs around Neptune's head. Something in the cast of the shape of her face sends butterflies and birds fluttering through Venus' belly, savagely fragile angles in the coil of pleasure that pulses through her insides.

"Ngh-!" Venus cuts herself off before she can keep following that train of thought to its _obvious_ conclusion, and throws herself into something different instead; anything to distract her from how much she already wants to cum. "You're ch-cheating, aren't you?"

"What?" Jupiter asks.

"You were getting eaten out before I really started touching yourself! And you still haven't come!"

"In my defense, _ah_ , I'm not sure Neptune is o-on my side here, eithER-" Jupiter replies, right as Neptune intensifies her assault and makes Jupiter _scream_.

Jupiter's obvious orgasm makes Venus physically _hurt_ with need, but she can't bring herself to come, no matter how painful the alternative is. So she closes her eyes. And listens to Jupiter and Neptune. And continues to fuck herself, like the third wheel she used to think she was. When they were all still human, and Neptune and Jupiter were kissing in the closet, and she couldn't bring herself to turn her mind's eye away from them, or look away at all. How could she have done that to them-?

"Look, Venus," Jupiter groans, her voice falling apart in the aftershocks of her climax, torn through while Neptune still continues to tongue her. Reaching out to take Venus' chin with one shaking hand, asking her to watch. "Look me in the eyes. Come."

* * *

Out of all of the planets of the solar system, Jupiter has the greatest mass. Jupiter isn't notable for how large it might or might not be, but notable for the _gravity_ that grabs at all things and touches upon everything. Catching comets and throwing them out of the solar system, or towards the bright center where they might meet Earth. Sixty-nine moons surround Jupiter, more than any other; dragged inexorably into her orbit.

So too does Jupiter bring her girlfriends into her circle. Even the planet Neptune is almost twenty times less massive, and so too does Neptune sometimes yield to Jupiter's gravity.

"I think we should have brought proper toys with us," Neptune complains. This is no big deal, because Neptune complains about absolutely everything and everything.

"Would _you_ have wanted to carry them around?" Jupiter asks her.

"Shut _up_."

Venus takes Neptune into a kiss from behind, and when she breaks away, she sees that Neptune _is_ a bit watery.

"If we had our toys, what would you do with them?" Venus asks, biting the inside of her cheek.

"You know exactly what I would do," Neptune replies, her voice haughty.

"Spell it out for us," Jupiter says. She palms Neptune's breasts, and Neptune does an incredibly good job of pretending to not be aroused.

"You can't guess?" Neptune drawls. "I must be more creative than I think I am; you're welcome, by the way, my darlings. Venus, I would fill you with as many egg vibrators as I could, while they were all on."

"Um," Venus says. "I can think of many limiting factors there."

"If we ran out, I would get more. I would stuff you until you couldn't fit any more inside of you."

"What if you went too far and then I exploded?"

Neptune laughs. "I don't think you can go supernova. Not like that, anyways. If you exploded, it would just be because I made you horny and then made you come so hard that every last one of your eyeballs rolled up and turned backwards in their sockets."

"UM."

"What about me?" Jupiter asks, half-leaning on Neptune.

"Oh, that's easy. I would tie you up from head to toe, and put you in handcuffs."

"Handcuffs?" Jupiter echoes, deadpan. "I thought those were for Venus."

"If you think that I can't find a way to cuff all of your arms, even the hypothetical and metaphorical ones, you've got another thing coming. I would tie you up so that you couldn't touch yourself or move — oh, actually, I'd put you in a blindfold, too. And gag you. All you would be able to do is think about me fucking you."

"Wow," Jupiter says. "Good thing for me that we don't have any of that with us."

"Eh," Neptune replies. "We have you. Look at those arms. You've got lesbian musician hands. Not the delicate piano-playing kind, the rugged and calloused 'won't use a guitar pick' kind."

"She also does carpentry," Venus points out.

"What a sexy bitch," Neptune says. "And you could use every one of those hands to tie someone up, cuff them and cover their eyes. Too bad it wouldn't work to use _your_ hands on _you_."

"That is a shame," Venus says, and she takes a slow blink with every eye. "I guess she could use all of her hands on you, instead."

"I _do_ deserve a reward for all of my hard work," Neptune drawls.

Then Jupiter smiles, and pushes Neptune to the ground with all the unyielding weight of more than a dozen earthly atmospheres. Hands beyond counting mist and gather out of the air, sliding across Neptune; fingers bleeding into palms bleeding into wrists bleeding into arms and skin bleeding into open atmosphere, like eddies and vortices of turbulence in any storm. The inner curve of a finger traces the inside of Neptune's throat, wicking sweat. The difference between "wicked" and "wicking" is that one of the words is in past tense and the other is in the now.

The shape of a liquid conforms to its container. Now, Neptune is not restrained and contained by herself, but bound by Jupiter's grip, drawing her legs open and holding them apart as surely as anything could.

"Is this all you two can do?" Neptune asks. "I could domme me harder."

"Neptune," Jupiter says. "Can't you let us fuck you without being a mean girl?"

"Make me," Neptune says, with all of the grace of a seducer and a succubus, right before Venus simply sits on her face.

"That's better," Venus says, wiggling a bit, and Jupiter snorts, taking both of Neptune's hands.

"I think Neptune corrupted you," Jupiter says. Neptune's cunt is wet with the evidence of all the other ways they've had sex, and weeping with how goddamn _horny_ she is. She can hardly move in Jupiter's impromptu straitjacket.

"She corrupted both of us," Venus replies, gasping as Neptune puts herself to work. "But I guess it doesn't count… b-because we were already corrupted, she, she just washed off all of the shiny bits?"

"I don't know how she could have washed anything, as dirty as she is," Jupiter says, and she takes to Neptune, inside, outside, everywhere she knows. Neptune is as the ocean, and Jupiter's every hand is with her. She fucks Neptune's cunt with one hand and her ass with another, splitting her open.

"Nnh!"

"I, uh, knew you could put your tongue to a better use," Venus moans, still a little bit embarrassed by her impromptu own dirty talk. She and Jupiter are not like Neptune, completely blithe, blase, and unbothered by the filth that might spill from their mouths.

They just do it anyways. Touch is a language unto itself, but language is a kind of touch.

Neptune redoubles her efforts, putting her tongue to better use as if to punish Venus with pleasure for daring to tease her while she can't talk back. But she's still a bit distracted, getting fucked so hard that it hurts so much that it feels a little good, getting fucked so well that it feels so good that it hurts a little.

"You're always so good to us," Jupiter whispers. "You do deserve a reward for it, for real. You don't need to make a snappy joke out of it."

"I don't-" Venus gasps. "-she can't hear you, Jupiter-"

But Neptune holds Jupiter's hands. "Trust me," Jupiter says. "She can."

Venus nods, quivery and shaking- "She — god — I love — she does, deserve it-"

"Do you hear that?" Jupiter asks asks quietly, her voice tender, and she pumps her fingers harder.

When Neptune comes, she _does_ deserve it; pleasure swirling around inside of her and literally dripping out of her for lack of any other escape from her imprisoned body, drowning her in a tidal wave of sensation made out of herself.

"Maybe we didn't need the toys after all," Neptune murmurs when she comes back to her senses, when Venus and Jupiter have given her body back to her.

"You can make Venus go supernova some other time," Jupiter says, and Venus blushes fiercely, but doesn't disagree. She just makes like Jupiter, and snuggles up against Neptune, feeling the ways that their bodies fit together.

* * *

When they wake up in the morning after falling asleep under the stars, Venus rolls up the blanket and folds up her telescope, slinging it over her back before they make the journey back.

When they get back, when she and Jupiter put the telescope back under the stairs, they find one of Neptune's paintings. It's not pretty or beautiful, but it is gorgeous nonetheless.

In the end, it's Jupiter who takes it from the cupboard and hangs it on the wall where everyone can see it. She and Venus both love it, and somehow, Neptune finds that she doesn't have the heart or the desire to take it back down.


End file.
